I sort of take issue with "experiment succeeds". You don't (shouldn't) set up an experiment to prove or disprove something, merely to discover.
I'm sure the issue, if indeed there is one, is with the reporting not the scientists though.
Trinity College experiment succeeds after 69 years
41–50 of 119 posts
Re: Trinity College experiment succeeds after 69 years
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Science isn't about "told you so". It's about rigor, about completion. It may seem hilarious because of the length of time involved for the experiment to complete, but what if the results hadn't been what we assumed? Science is the only enlightenment we have, and to dismiss the outcome as obvious is to climb back into the dark ages.
Really? Scientists are people. Proving each other wrong is one of the biggest motivators to do years of painstaking, labour-intensive research. Of course, you can't prove someone wrong without being rigorous.
It gets finnier if you imagine Stephen Hawking saying "I told you so." to Leonard Susskind.
D'OOOH... WERNSTROM!!!Re: Trinity College experiment succeeds after 69 years
#43"The experiment was begun by a colleague of Nobel Prize winner Ernest Walton in the physics department of Trinity in 1944." Am I the only one who finds this insulting? They could at least name the guy!!!
"Over the years, the identity of the scientist who began the experiment was forgotten, and the experiment lay unattended on a shelf where it continued to shed drops uninterrupted while gathering layers of dust. Physicists at Trinity College recently began to monitor the experiment again. Last April they set up a webcam so that anyone could watch and try to be the first person ever to witness the drop fall live." - http://www.nature.com/news/world-s-slowest-moving-drop-caugh...
Re: Trinity College experiment succeeds after 69 years
#44I sort of take issue with "experiment succeeds". You don't (shouldn't) set up an experiment to prove or disprove something, merely to discover. I'm sure the issue, if indeed there is one, is with the reporting not the scientists though.
Of course you set it up to prove or disprove a hypothesis. Otherwise you're just trying random stuff with no idea why it might be interesting.
Re: Trinity College experiment succeeds after 69 years
#45Radiolab had an interesting segment about the Pitch Drop Experiment, interesting to listen: http://www.radiolab.org/2013/feb/05/never-quite-now/
[deleted]
Re: Trinity College experiment succeeds after 69 years
#46Am I the only one to think that this is pretty boring?
Re: Trinity College experiment succeeds after 69 years
#47The first thought that popped into my punny little brain was: Why didn't they use a centrifuge to accelerate results? The one variable that could be controlled is the gravitational force on the substance. If we were on the moon the experiment, as designed, would take far longer to produce a drop. By using a centrifuge they could have easily simulated significantly greater gravitational forces and arrived at a result…
How long would you have to run the centrifuge for? If it were 6-7 times faster, you would have to run a machine nonstop for 10 years. Seems like a tremendous waste of energy, heat from a motor which could affect the results, and a great likelihood of experimental equipment failure.
Re: Trinity College experiment succeeds after 69 years
#48I sort of take issue with "experiment succeeds". You don't (shouldn't) set up an experiment to prove or disprove something, merely to discover. I'm sure the issue, if indeed there is one, is with the reporting not the scientists though.
substitute "ends" for "succeeds" if you're feeling pedantic. I think that for a decades long experiment the two words become synonyms.
Re: Trinity College experiment succeeds after 69 years
#49While I'm fond of this type of down-to-earth experiments, I'm curious about the scientific value of waiting for decades to observe the drop falling due to Earth's gravity, versus placing the apparatus in a centrifuge, which I imagine would dramatically accelerate the process. Maybe the higher forces would affect the way the drop is formed, in a way that was deemed undesirable?
down-to-earth experiments Bwahahahah!
Please keep the discussion constructive. No, there is no pun there.
Re: Trinity College experiment succeeds after 69 years
#50The first thought that popped into my punny little brain was: Why didn't they use a centrifuge to accelerate results? The one variable that could be controlled is the gravitational force on the substance. If we were on the moon the experiment, as designed, would take far longer to produce a drop. By using a centrifuge they could have easily simulated significantly greater gravitational forces and arrived at a result…
How long would you have to run the centrifuge for? If it were 6-7 times faster, you would have to run a machine nonstop for 10 years. Seems like a tremendous waste of energy, heat from a motor which could affect the results, and a great likelihood of experimental equipment failure.
No, you could go a million times faster. A million!
Here's an interesting resource:
http://www.endmemo.com/bio/grpm.php
Now, there might be reasons why a million g's might be a bad idea. Maybe 100K g's is a better choice. Someone with more expertise in centrifuge application could chip in and clarify this.