Collaborative Lab Reports with Google Docs

Science is a collaborative endeavor. The solitary genius working on the next great scientific breakthrough is a myth not seen much today. Instead, most physicists have worked in a group at one point in their careers, whether as a graduate student, faculty member, staff scientist, or industrial researcher. As an experimental nuclear physicist with research at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, my collaboration consists of over 200 scientists, both national and international. A typical experiment will have a dozen or so principal investigators. Add in the hundreds of staff scientists, engineers, and technicians, and it is clear that science is truly a collaborative effort. This paper will describe the use of Google Docs for collaborative reports for an introductory physics laboratory.