{"id":194,"date":"2008-04-13T08:50:11","date_gmt":"2008-04-13T13:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/194"},"modified":"2008-04-13T08:50:11","modified_gmt":"2008-04-13T13:50:11","slug":"the-ten-most-beautiful-experiments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/194","title":{"rendered":"The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/04\/13\/books\/review\/Dizikes-t.html?ref=science\">NY Times book review<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Johnson\u2019s list is eclectic and his outlook romantic. \u201cScience in the 21st century has become industrialized,\u201d he states, with experiments \u201ccarried out by research teams that have grown to the size of corporations.\u201d By contrast, Johnson (a longtime contributor to The New York Times) favors artisans of the laboratory, chronicling \u201cthose rare moments when, using the materials at hand, a curious soul figured out a way to pose a question to the universe and persisted until it replied.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The &#8220;materials at hand&#8221; is one thing that continually amazes me.  I read details of some century-old experiment and am reminded that their apparatus and supplies were hand-crafted, often in the same lab.  You read about Rutherford doing <a href=\"http:\/\/web.lemoyne.edu\/~giunta\/rutherford.html\">alpha-scattering experiments in pure nitrogen<\/a>.  Did he order a tank of compressed nitrogen from the local welding-supplies shop, like I do?  Of course not.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The nitrogen was obtained by the well-known method of adding ammonium chloride to sodium nitrite, and stored over water.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(My well-known method involves the internet and a credit card)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NY Times book review Johnson\u2019s list is eclectic and his outlook romantic. \u201cScience in the 21st century has become industrialized,\u201d he states, with experiments \u201ccarried out by research teams that have grown to the size of corporations.\u201d By contrast, Johnson &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/194\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,27,35,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-links","category-other-science","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}