LabVIEW for data acquisition and instrument control in an introductory physics laboratory for engineering undergraduates

Engineering students constitute a large cohort of all students who take first-year physics laboratory at universities.Unfortunately, many laboratory activities that these students perform do not reflect their educational needs and interests.One method of increasing engineering student engagement in physics labs is to blend in elements of design and automationthrough interesting applications which rely upon the physics principle under investigation. To achieve this blend, suitablyflexible hardware and software is required. We present our implementation of such a physics laboratory program forengineers based on the LabVIEW programming language. Details of how students are led to gain experience withLabVIEW throughout the term is presented. Two specific experiments involving Hall switches are detailed.A survey of 178 students shows that LabVIEW activities introduced in our laboratory are of an appropriate difficulty,and that students find them useful for their educational needs. The survey also shows that students value LabVIEW-basedphysics exercises significantly more than microcomputer-based labs (MBLs) or traditional labs.