〘 Experimental & Statistical Techniques 〙

Usage Requirements: Windows, Mac, Linux, or Docker OS

LabVIEW by National Instruments (NI) is by far one of the most widely used software in labs around the world for connecting, automating, and controlling hardware and collection of data using a unique "circuit board"-like graphical programming language. Visually design logic gates, controls, and data acquisition/display panels that can either be used for analysis locally or with configuration of external hardware. It's a crucial, complex tool that is also fun to play around with and create simple projects. While the professional version is only available for purchase, a community version is offered for free, and if you're not working with advanced instruments or algorithums, it should cover just about everything you need.

Contributor: Amelia Binau, Indiana University - Bloomington

Usage Requirements: Windows, Mac, Linux, or Docker OS

Possibly one of the most commonly used software for designing printed circuit boards (PCBs) for electronics. Design a PCB board as a .kicad_pcb file and an associated schematic (quite literally a circuit diagram) as a .kicad_sch file, export as a Gerber file, and have your circuit printed by a reliable company such asPCBWay. When laboratories need a circuit to accomplish a specific digital or mechanical task, it's common to have scientists design their own on software such as KiCad. A similar software produced by Autodesk is EAGLE.

Contributor: Amelia Binau, Indiana University - Bloomington

Usage Requirements: Internet Connection and Browser

Designed to help researchers color-code maps and cartography, ColorBrewer 2.0 assists the user in selecting color schemes appropriate for data visualization. Use this tool to improve choices for colorblind accessibility, determine appropriate contrast, or just test how a set of colors may look when illustrating attributes of your data.

Contributor: Amelia Binau on behalf of Prof. Mark Messier, Indiana University - Bloomington

Language Requirements: Python (optional). Usage Requirements: Runs on C++ and Python. Requires standard consumer desktop/laptop hardware with OpenGL graphics support. Reads and writes standard CAD formats like .FCStd (native), STL, etc. Works offline.

An open-source, parametric 3D computer-aided design (CAD) modeler, built heavily on Open CASCADE Technology. Users use interactive graphical workbenches to sketch 2D plans and extrude them into 3D objects, allowing engineers and learners to design mechanical parts, architecture, and structural components without expensive proprietary licensing.

Contributor: Neil Ghugare, University of Florida, The Ohio State University

Usage Requirements: Internet connection and internet browser

Convenient location for many relevant and contemporary fields/topics in the optics space including geometric optics, lasers, electromagnetism, material optical properties, signal processing. Has very concise and well-written articles that simplify concepts and explanations and provide citations to begin a deeper dive if you so choose. you can just search any relevant topic and add RP photonics to the end of your search query to find their article or you can just navigate on their website. Topics and subtopics are broken up in categories.

Contributor: Gabriel Skowronek, University of Central Florida (UCF)

Usage Requirements: Internet Connection

NotebookLM is an AI Research tool developed by Google which can summarize, make connections, and answer questions from uploaded PDFs, websites, YouTube videos, audio files, Google Docs, and Google Slides.

Contributor: Robert C. Laughlin, Indiana University - Bloomington

Usage Requirements: Internet Connection

SciSpace is an AI specifically for locating relevant articles for research topics. Use SciSpace to help speed up the process of finding relevant articles, it's like a more direct Google Scholar. SciSpace really helps with finding papers to read if you're getting into a field or doing a literature review.

Contributor: Jonathan Sullivan-Wood

Usage Requirements: Internet Connection

A simple, online interface for simulating simple circuits. Loads with a sample LCR circuit and displays plots of the voltage and current applied to each component as a function of time. Provides a sizable index of sample circuits to browse and learn from.

Contributor: Amelia Binau, Indiana University - Bloomington

Usage Requirements: Appropriate compiler/interpreter/IDE. Language Requirements: Python, R, JavaScript, and more.

Plotly is an advanced suite of plotting libraries that allow for the creation of detailed, clean, interactive plots in a variety of languages, most notably Python. Useful for any scenario you may want to upgrade the quality of your scientific data visualization.

Contributor: Amelia Binau, Indiana University - Bloomington

Language Requirement(s): Written in Python and C++, among others. Requires Python 3 and standard C++ libraries for hardware integration. Usage Requirements: Runs on Raspberry Pi or Linux single-board computers. Controls microcontrollers via serial/I2C/SPI buses. Can be tested offline or deployed on hardware, but may require internet connection to download code/documents.

An open-source design and code repository created by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory for a 6-wheeled DIY rover. Modeled after Mars rovers, it provides students/engineers with reference control software, mechanical CAD files, and sensor scripts to practice robotics and embedded control system hardware design. The hardware to build the rover is COTS (consumer off-the-shelf).

Contributor: Amelia Binau, Indiana University - Bloomington, Curator; Neil Ghugare, University of Florida, Writer

Language Requirements: Python. Usage Requirements: Python-Compatable IDE

Scikit-Learn is an open-source package that offers an expansive library of statistical functions necessary for most machine learning applications. A former Google Summer of Code project, Scikit offers tools for just about any machine learning or optimization problem. Regressions, decision trees, classification models, Naive Bayes methods, model evaluation, just about any supervised or unsupervised model functionality is availble. It even has visualization support.

Contributor: Amelia Binau, Indiana University - Bloomington

Language Requirements: Python, Terminal. Usage Requirements: Python-Compatable IDE

Very useful and fast Python package manager that makes Python version and dependency management really simple. Packages and their versions are listed and updated easily in a pyproject.toml file, where additional project settings/configs can also be managed.

Contributor: Johnathan Gutierrez, Indiana University - Bloomington

Language Requirements: Python. Usage Requirements: Python-Compatable IDE

Designed to be an all-encompassing package specifically for plasma physics, PlasmaPy can be of use to astrophysicists, nuclear physcists, high energy physicists, and beyond. Complete with tutorials and example notebooks displaying the package's functionalities. Create simulated charged particle radiographs, visualize E- & B-fields, swept Langmuir trace analysis, properties of two-fluid dispersion relations, power spectra of Thomson scattering & thermal bremsstrahlung, and more. It also provides a vast library submodule of atomic/ionic information for describing the constituents of your chosen plasma.

Contributor: Amelia Binau, Indiana University - Bloomington

Language Requirements: Python. Usage Requirements: Python-Compatable IDE, internet connection

Mie scattering, the scattering of light off particles of comparable size to the wavelength of the incoming light, is the phenomenon that makes clouds in Earth's atmosphere appear white! miepython simulates this scattering process for use in laboratories, education, and simple visualization purposes. Calculate near- and far-field effects, extinction, scattering, and absorption efficiencies, anisotropies, and more. Also available is a JupyterLite interface that allows sample notebooks to be run directly in browser!

Contributor: Amelia Binau, Indiana University - Bloomington

Usage Requirements: Language Requirements: Python. Usage Requirements: You only need a decent computer (minimum i3) and commercial spectrometer (with its driver, usually provided by the vendor). The software itself will work with Windows, MacOS and Linux. However, online connection with spectrometer will run successfully if the hardware-driver also available in the same OS. No internet connectivity is needed.

The GUI can be installed online and easily via PyPi. Connect to your commercial spectrometer and provide the driver (see the manual for details). It is useful for researcher and developer who use spectrometer and operate real time analysis for their project. This GUI overcome two steps problem in spectometer data analysis. Usually, researcher record the spectra and post process the signal using other software. This GUI enables real time analysis of spectral features online. This helps instant decision making and real time analysis of material transformation.

Contributor: Iwan Darmadi (Research center for Photonics, National Research and Innovation Agency of Indonesia)

Language Requirement(s): Requires Python (C++ front-end available). Usage Requirements: Runs on standard CPUs to GPU/TPU clusters. Handles arbitrary tensor data formats (NumPy arrays, HDF5, etc.). Internet connectivity recommended for package installation and model downloads.

An open-source machine learning and scientific computing framework featuring dynamic automatic differentiation. Researchers use it to build custom neural networks, perform GPU-accelerated statistical inference, and execute non-linear regression on large datasetes. It lowers the barrier to entry for experimentalists by allowing dynamic code execution and intuitive debugging using standard Python syntax. Its largest competitor is TensorFlow, but PyTorch is more overwhelmingly used in research.

Neil Ghugare, University of Florida

Usage requirements: Internet connection

Dark matter direct detection experiments require extremely "quiet" detectors - nothing in the physical environment surrounding them can interact with the detector medium that might be mistaken for dark matter. For this reason, extremely radiopure materials - materials with incredibly low rates of radioactive decay from impurities or the bulk material itself - must be used. At Radiopurity.org, SNOLAB and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have created a database of radiopure materials as they are quantified and published by associated collaborations/experiments. For instance, find concentrations of U-238, T-232, and K-40 in stainless steel, measured by the UK Dark Matter Collaboration.

Contributor: Amelia Binau, Indiana University - Bloomington

Supplies vendor; paid merchandise.

The go-to for many labs' hardware needs. Whether it's a bolt of highly specific specificiations or a more general machine shop tool, just about anything needed for designing a physical experiment of any proportion can be found here. McMaster-Carr is reliable and you can browse product specifications in great detail.

Contributor: Amelia Binau, Indiana University - Bloomington

Supplies vendor; paid merchandise.

My favorite supplier of electronic components, from heavy-duty hardware to breadboard components to microelectronics, you can get however many of whatever you need of any tolerance, size, shape, voltage, wattage, capacitance, durability, or material. All of the most random, niche electronic parts you could think of, it's quite fun to browse and the company is quite reliable. Great for identifying electrical equipment without much prior knowledge, too, perhaps just a description or ID number.

Contributor: Amelia Binau, Indiana University - Bloomington

Supplies vendor; paid merchandise.

All of the PCBs (printed circuit boards) I've made for lab use I've had printed by PCBWay and they've always been great quality for a reasonable price. Draft up any board you can dream of in a Gerber file and they'll print it for you. Custom, pre-assembled boards are available, as well.

Contributor: Amelia Binau, Indiana University - Bloomington