The use of dc glow discharges as undergraduate educational tools.

Plasmas have a beguiling way of getting students interested in physics. We argue that plasmas can and should be incorporated into the undergraduate curriculum as both demonstrations and advanced investigations of electromagnetism and quantum effects. We describe a device, based on a direct-current (dc) glow discharge tube, which allows for a number of experiments into topics such as electrical breakdown, spectroscopy, magnetism, and electron temperature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]