Take-Home Labs at the University of Chicago

In the 1930s, the teaching staff of the University of Chicago devised a clever way to deliver experimental data to their introductory students without meeting them in the laboratory. The university’s curriculum included a required Introductory Course in the Physical Sciences. There were probably too many students to allow for a standard face-to-face laboratory experience. In this article, I will discuss the solution that was reached about 80 years ago, and muse on how it can be used during a time when a pandemic makes regular laboratory instruction impossible. Their approach may be useful to present-day teachers trying to deliver a laboratory experience to students in introductory physics courses without face-to-face instruction.