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Experiments for Young Engineers and Scientists

104 points by the-mitr 4y ago

JKCalhoun 4y ago
For young engineers and scientists that want to get their hands dirty (or don't have a laptop or don't want to do science on a laptop) there's the tried and true book-variety of science experiments. Loved (still love) this classic put together by UNESCO: https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780385052757 https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780385052757
- frozencell 4y ago
  Dumb question: Why is it "limited"?
  - zorpner 4y ago
    It's still under copyright. The Internet Archive owns a physical copy of the book, which they have scanned, and if you believe in Controlled Digital Lending ( https://controlleddigitallending.org https://controlleddigitallending.org -- to be clear, I do) this permits them to lend a copy out online to one person at a time.
- cultartawayyyi 4y ago
  Even better, the Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments: https://archive.org/details/TheGoldenBookOfChemistryExperiments-English/page/n13/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/TheGoldenBookOfChemistryExperime... Just keep an eye on the kids while they're experimenting. It's a fun read, but it includes experiments like "how to cut glass tubes", "making chlorine in the home lab", "making sulfuric acid"...
  - splittingTimes 4y ago
    Amazon on that book: "Many of the experiments contained in the book are now considered highly dangerous for unsupervised children, and would not appear in a modern children's chemistry book. OCLC lists only 126 copies of this book in libraries worldwide. It was said that the experiments and information contained herein were too dangerous for the general public." Wow
rramadass 4y ago
I have the previous version "expeyes junior". Specs: https://expeyes.in/compare.html https://expeyes.in/compare.html Good tool, not the best nor most polished but quite versatile. The UI, Documentation can all be better but for any Tinkerer, good enough.
gerdesj 4y ago
These well meaning sort of things are nice but completely miss the point. Were you pushed, coerced, encouraged, fancied a go, bloody minded or all of the above. There is the concept of the "self starter" - someone who simply does exactly what you think they should. There's the bloody minded ones who simply don't conform. People are people. No more and no less. Children can be guided and sometimes you get it right. My uncle made a suggestion 35 odd years ago about me looking into Civil Engineering and I ended up running an IT company for the last 22 years. What got you into STEM/Engineering/IT/whatevs?
- colineartheta 4y ago
  This comment makes almost zero sense. What are you trying to say?
donw 4y ago
I see a bit of measurement, but nothing that looks like an experiment; e.g.: observe, think, predict, test, iterate. Need to dig out the link, but there's a video of a British biologist from a few years ago, talking about how today's university students are completely unable to do any actual science. All they know how to do is reference "peer-reviewed" (meaning total nonsense) papers to "prove" things.
- overgrownzygote 4y ago
  For what it's worth, my undergraduate experience was that we had very few opportunities to do any actual empirical* research in most disciplines. Most of the "research" positions available were just grunt work, and even in cases where we had the opportunity to perform some independent research, often we had to use relatively unreliable methodologies because the more robust ones required more resources than we had access to. I also found that a lot of hard science students didn't understand the statistical methods they were applying very well, but that's a different can of worms. * "Empirical" is a pretty big caveat here — I know some math majors that had the opportunity to carry out some substantive research, and I imagine the same goes for other disciplines that don't rely as heavily on labor-intensive (or capital-intensive, or both) data collection.

104 points by the-mitr 4y ago

For young engineers and scientists that want to get their hands dirty (or don't have a laptop or don't want to do science on a laptop) there's the tried and true book-variety of science experiments. Loved (still love) this classic put together by UNESCO: https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780385052757 https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780385052757

frozencell 4y ago
Dumb question: Why is it "limited"?
- zorpner 4y ago
  It's still under copyright. The Internet Archive owns a physical copy of the book, which they have scanned, and if you believe in Controlled Digital Lending ( https://controlleddigitallending.org https://controlleddigitallending.org -- to be clear, I do) this permits them to lend a copy out online to one person at a time.
cultartawayyyi 4y ago
Even better, the Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments: https://archive.org/details/TheGoldenBookOfChemistryExperiments-English/page/n13/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/TheGoldenBookOfChemistryExperime... Just keep an eye on the kids while they're experimenting. It's a fun read, but it includes experiments like "how to cut glass tubes", "making chlorine in the home lab", "making sulfuric acid"...
- splittingTimes 4y ago
  Amazon on that book: "Many of the experiments contained in the book are now considered highly dangerous for unsupervised children, and would not appear in a modern children's chemistry book. OCLC lists only 126 copies of this book in libraries worldwide. It was said that the experiments and information contained herein were too dangerous for the general public." Wow

rramadass 4y ago

I have the previous version "expeyes junior". Specs: https://expeyes.in/compare.html https://expeyes.in/compare.html Good tool, not the best nor most polished but quite versatile. The UI, Documentation can all be better but for any Tinkerer, good enough.

gerdesj 4y ago

These well meaning sort of things are nice but completely miss the point. Were you pushed, coerced, encouraged, fancied a go, bloody minded or all of the above. There is the concept of the "self starter" - someone who simply does exactly what you think they should. There's the bloody minded ones who simply don't conform. People are people. No more and no less. Children can be guided and sometimes you get it right. My uncle made a suggestion 35 odd years ago about me looking into Civil Engineering and I ended up running an IT company for the last 22 years. What got you into STEM/Engineering/IT/whatevs?

colineartheta 4y ago
This comment makes almost zero sense. What are you trying to say?

donw 4y ago

I see a bit of measurement, but nothing that looks like an experiment; e.g.: observe, think, predict, test, iterate. Need to dig out the link, but there's a video of a British biologist from a few years ago, talking about how today's university students are completely unable to do any actual science. All they know how to do is reference "peer-reviewed" (meaning total nonsense) papers to "prove" things.

overgrownzygote 4y ago
For what it's worth, my undergraduate experience was that we had very few opportunities to do any actual empirical* research in most disciplines. Most of the "research" positions available were just grunt work, and even in cases where we had the opportunity to perform some independent research, often we had to use relatively unreliable methodologies because the more robust ones required more resources than we had access to. I also found that a lot of hard science students didn't understand the statistical methods they were applying very well, but that's a different can of worms. * "Empirical" is a pretty big caveat here — I know some math majors that had the opportunity to carry out some substantive research, and I imagine the same goes for other disciplines that don't rely as heavily on labor-intensive (or capital-intensive, or both) data collection.