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Do The Experiment!


Ed is an EE, an inactive PE, and author in Poughkeepsie, NY. Contact him at ed [email protected] with "Dr Dobbs" in the subject to avoid spam filters.

SAS, which in this context is the Society for Amateur Scientists, held its Fourth Annual National Citizen Science Conference in late August. Unlike huge industry conferences, this type of gathering doesn't attract a large crowd and, in fact, essentially all of the attendees also presented papers.

Although this SAS isn't a programmer's organization and the convention had nothing to say about hammering out code, you'll find a link between today's students and tomorrow's tech industry, plus a missing link in the desktop Linux revolution.

Doing Science

Dr. Shawn Carlson wrote the "Amateur Scientist" column in Scientific American from 1995 through 2001, until the magazine discontinued it. That column's 73-year run inspired generations of amateur scientists with examples of meaningful scientific experiments on a minimal budget. The magazine now devotes a similar number of pages to humor, light commentary, and superficial descriptions of tech gadgets.

Dr. Carlson received a MacArthur Foundation "genius" Fellowship in 1999, an indication that he's not to be taken lightly despite his engaging manner.

He founded the Society for Amateur Scientists in 1994 with the intent of "Helping ordinary people do extraordinary science." SAS members tend to be folks who find out how the world works through experiments using equipment ranging from cardboard and tape to state-of-the-art gear, but with dedication second to none.

For example, Bill Appleby decided to find out how fabric similar to that on the Hindenburg zeppelin burns when ignited. Much to his surprise, he found that uncoated cotton burned faster than any of several coated versions, including fabric doped with highly flammable cellulose nitrate. None of the samples burned fast enough to account for the Hindenburg's rapid demise, which disproves the flammable-fabric explanation of the disaster.

Oddly, it seems he was the first person to actually perform such an experiment, rather than simply proclaiming that the fabric must have fueled the fire. His equipment consisted largely of a charcoal grill to support the samples, so cost wasn't keeping anybody else from testing the claims.

Matthew Templeton described amateur astronomers' observations of variable star intensities, noting how many variable stars there are and how few professional telescopes have time to watch them. It seems amateurs provide many of the continuing measurements, as well as the occasional first-sighting newsflash.

On the other end of the electromagnetic spectrum, Joseph DiVerdi gave us a tour of the radio telescope installation at Colorado's Table Mountain, which lay abandoned for several decades before a group of amateurs began rehabilitating it. Generations of owls deposited cubic yards of pellets in one of the telescope mounts, so science took a back seat to simple cleanup for quite a while.

Forrest Mims III showed the many observations he and his family have made, ranging from atmospheric ozone concentration through detecting microbes carried by forest-fire smoke. Aleta Karstad presented her gorgeous nature drawings in a talk showing how we should add illustrations to our field notes; as I can rarely trace a straightedge without getting my thumb in the picture, her example was somewhat discouraging.

Although this was a family affair with several youngsters in attendance, most of us were old enough to reminisce about the Good Old Days when we nearly killed ourselves while "experimenting" with chemistry of one sort or another. That, unfortunately, highlighted another problem covered by David Wheeler in his talk on Home Science Projects and Homeland Security. It seems that the effort to stamp out crystal meth labs has made it illegal for Texans to own anything shaped like an Erlenmeyer flask, let alone buy many useful chemicals. Of course, generations of moonshiners have done high-quality chemistry without any glassware at all.

The fact that budding scientists can't perform many simple experiments for lack of equipment and materials is just part of the problem.


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