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Tools of the Trade - Page 2

© Linda Bond

In both cases, I must be able to repeat my results or there's no way anyone in the scientific community is going to believe me. So, when I feel sufficiently brave, or when the Nobel Prize is coming around for selection and I'm in a hurry, I may make my announcement to the world at a conference or by submitting a paper to a journal. In this way, I lay myself open to praise or ridicule as my fellow scientists descend upon my work with envy and, depending on their relationship to me, try to repeat my results (to prove me right) or try to not repeat my results (to prove me wrong).

Still want to be a scientist? Okay, read on...

Tools Identified

So far, we have identified at least 16 different "soft" tools used by physicists (or other scientists) in their work:

• the mind
• 5 senses (vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch)
• observations
• ideas
• experiments
• conclusions
• discoveries
• theories
• laws
• journals
• conferences

• and don't forget, motivation!

With these tools, we can get a lot done. But there are also...

Devices and Instruments

So what about those traditional tools I mentioned early on? Nifty, yes; however, microscopes, telescopes, measuring devices, etc., all basically only carry out the function of extending our inherent abilities. They enable us to see better, hear better, taste and smell better, and register sensations like temperature and texture better. Or, they allow us to make more precise measurements than we are capable of making with our "naked" intuitive sense about distances, heights, lengths, depths, breadths, pressures, etc.

In truth, we only invent devices and instruments that we can understsand as extensions ofourselves. If we cannot envision a different kind of reality, we certainly can't design an instrument to capture its essence, or can we?

Think about it!

Inventions and Technology

If you really are interested in scientific instruments, the following list of inventions will get you started in your search:

200 BCE - Greeks invent astrolabe, a device for measuring the position of heavenly bodies

1552 AD - Italian physicist Giambattista della Porta invents convex lens

1590/1609 - Dutch spectacle maker Zacharias Janssen and Dutch scientist Hans Lippershey independently develop the compound microscope

1592 - Galileo invents thermoscope, a primitive thermometer

1643 - Italian mathematician Evangelista Torricelli invents the barometer

1665 - Parisian government official Pierre Petit - filar micrometer for measuring very small distances,angles or objects

1714 - German physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit - mercury thermometer and Fahrenheit scale

1742 - Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius - Centigrade or Celsius scale of temperature

See what I mean? Boring...(sorry, Celcius!)

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