Designing good experiments

This is another time I don't really have great answers, but a question over at the question place has me thinking about it.  Namely, what makes for a good experiment?  As far as the science goes, I'm comfortable about knowing the answer.  Or at least knowing enough of an answer. 

But for the purposes of you readers -- what makes for a good experiment that you could do yourself?  How big or small could it be?  How long should it take to run?  How much expense is ok?  Is following a circuit diagram to assemble test equipment something you're comfortable with?  Carpentry?   And so on. 

For the original question -- a tabletop demonstration of the greenhouse effect -- I might actually have an answer of sorts.  I went running shortly after first reading the question.  That's often a good time for ideas to come to me, and a few did.  But at the moment, they'd take a pretty big table (like, say, 10 feet), you'd have to get hold of a dry ice supply (for the CO2), and you'd have to assemble a fairly simple circuit.  A several Watt laser would also be a plus, but I'm going to try to make sure that the experiment will work without it.

Question place

Time to hang out the shingle for questions.  As always, response time will be variable, including that I may not be able to answer.  If so, maybe a reader can.  And maybe we can have some discussion about the question and how we might go about finding the answer.

Climate -- cycles 1

One of the things we expect about the weather is that it will change.  Following the dictum, as I do, that climate is what you expect and weather is what you get, change is part of climate.  But what changes do we expect?  One sort of change we -- those of us living in middle or high latitudes (above, say, 30 N, or 30 S) -- expect is that winter will be colder than summer.  Namely, we expect an annual cycle to temperature.

As part of a different project, I've computed the size of the annual cycle in the 2 meter air temperature.  (When meteorologists talk about 'surface air temperature', it really means the air 2 meters above the ground). The scale is degrees Celsius for the amplitude -- the difference between the average temperature and the warmest, or between average and coldest. If you want the range between the warmest part of the annual cycle and coldest, double this number. If you want the amplitude in Fahrenheit, double it (well, multiply by 1.8).

This is a beautiful scientific picture. Why, may not be immediately obvious, and there is more to the story than the annual cycle. 

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The small world of science and internationality

Science is an international activity; it's also a rather small world.  I've mentioned both of those points before, I expect, but was a little surprised to be reminded of just how small a world it is.  I was in Russia for work recently, specifically St. Petersburg.  That's the story behind Dostoevsky being my summer reading.  At the meeting, of course, I met a number of Russian scientists in my area.  One of them being Dmitry Kiktev, deputy director of the Hydrometeorological Center.

Come ahead a little, and Michael Tobis (whom I know from some years of internet contact) posts a climate/weather news bit at In it for the Gold, regarding heat and fires in Russia.  The scientist quoted is ... Dmitry Kiktev.  In St. Petersburg, we experienced temperatures 20-25 F (10-12 C) above normal the whole week I was there (normal being 72-75 F, we had 95+).  The article is talking about Moscow, but to the same end -- extraordinary temperatures being observed.

A different thing which I'll get to is the Climate Doctrine of the Russian Federation, which I received a copy of when we visited the Main Geophysical Observatory in St. Petersburg.  One virtue it has (at least the English version; I don't speak or read Russian) is that it's short -- 22 pages of 5x8" (12x20 cm) text.  Not so much a story as points for discussion.  Different stories about the visit.

Scientific spectating

The peculiar subject line is to introduce a new series of posts I'll be making -- scientific spectating.  My idea is that there is too much science in the universe for us (any of us) to be expert about all of it.  On the other hand, same as there are too many sports to be expert at doing them all, we can all learn to be good spectators.  And being an informed spectator is its own kind of rewarding activity. 

It can be helpful to keep Science Jabberwocky in mind.  Individual terms can be pretty mystifying, but it can be obvious that certain ones are important -- CCR5 means nothing to me directly, but I know that it has something or other to do with plague and partial resistance that some Europeans have towards AIDS.  In a similar vein, you can know that Shaquille O'Neal is a center, without knowing exactly what a basketball center does.  On the other hand, you will find it easier to follow basketball if you know that he is a center.  Knowing that, you can watch what he does, and what other centers do.  After some time of that, you can appreciate watching the game much more.

It was in this vein that I appreciated some papers and comments in the late 1990s and early 2000s, regarding the expansion of the universe.  The expansion of the universe (the 'toves') had been expected to be slowing ('slithy').  After all, gravity was pulling everything together.  But then there were some observations presented which said that the toves were not slithy after all (that the expansion of the universe was not slowing).  It turned out that the expansion of the universe looked to be accelerating (mimsy).  In terms of doing the science myself, it may as well have been Jabberwocky.  But I could spectate -- clearly there was a conflict between the expected slithy-ness and the newly-observed mimsy-ness. 

As a spectator, I knew to start looking for papers defending the slithy-ness of the toves, or attacking the claimed observations of the mimsy-ness, or both.  That, or even newer papers supporting the recently new claims of the mimsy-ness of the toves (er, accelerating expansion of the universe).  And I saw just that.  As it worked out, the papers supporting the mimsy-ness of the toves were stronger, and held the field.  I was able to watch and appreciate that much.  In the same vein, I can appreciate watching a college basketball game -- seeing one team take up a zone defense, and the other break the zone by feeding the ball to their excellent outside shooter, or fail in their attempt to do so.  As a spectator, I know that the offensive team has to do something to counter the zone defense, and look for it.

It is this that the series will attempt to do -- help educate readers in how to be good spectators of science.  A related point being, most of the best spectators of sports are people who love playing the game themselves (whatever the game is).  You may not be professional level, any more than I am at basketball (or any other sport!).  But it can be more fun to spectate when you play the game sometimes yourself.  To that end, see my 'project folder' links, and keep asking questions.

Since I like a conversational approach to blogging, I'll invite comments, questions, suggestions at this point as to how you'd like to see this series go, whether you think it can be useful (and how), and so forth.