Statistics of Background Radiation

The internship began on Monday, 22nd June, under the supervision of Sohaib Shamim. First, I had to learn the basics of LabVIEW, a graphical programming language that is used extensively in the Physics Lab. We started with a simple LabVIEW tutorial, gaining some familiarity with the key features of LabVIEW, such as the Front Panel, Block diagram, functions toolbox etc. The first exercises required generating random numbers, using for and while loops, inputs and outputs, using controls and indicators, generating sine graphs etc. I then proceeded to using Boolean functions, comparison tools and gates, case and sequence structures, as well as using the different timing functions available. Exercises included building LEDs which would light when a certain time interval had elapsed, or when the generated random number was greater than 0.5 etc. Further exercises included the use of multiple structures, as well as feedback and shift registers. Often an attempt was made to carry out the same exercise with two different methods. Most importantly, the repeated use of Help Search and debugging was practiced, which is essential to most programming languages. In order to write programs for experiments where usually a lot of data recording is required, it is essential to know hot to write text files in LabVIEW. These required strong familiarity with array and string functions in the programming tool box. Here, it was important to gain some understanding of the different types of data encountered in LabVIEW, including numbers, one or two dimensional arrays, strings, boolean, waveforms and clusters, as well as their conversion and applications while using different case structures. For example, using a for loop changes the type of data: a 1D array becomes a 2D array outside the loop, whereas this doesn’t happen in other programming structures. Similarly, while writing to text files, it is imperative to use the ‘array to string’ and the ‘write to text file’ functions inside the loop, whereas this is not necessary with for loops. These kind of insights are helpful while investigating logical and syntax errors.