I have, since I can remember, had an affinity for tools and instruments…..and I actively use them and collect them at nearly every opportunity. In school, the scientific instruments and devices used to illustrate physical and chemical phenomenon were always of interest to me. I am not one who is content with a computer simulation of fire…if we are to discuss combustion then I want to see, hear, and smell something burning. Plain and simple. Do not bore this student with an on screen depiction of a high voltage discharge crackling through the air. Instead, pull out the Van de Graaf generator and let’s smell some ozone to go with the miniature lightning we just made!
The instruments used showed, demonstrated, and in some cases measured the principles in the real world. They were based upon someone’s vision of how to experimentally test the hypothesis they had dreamed up to see if it was valid or not. In so doing, an apparatus had to be created to perform the experiment. This often would involve discovery and invention of how to accomplish the task within the confines of the technology and materials that were available at the time. Sometimes new materials and tools had to be invented and developed in order to test a theory long after the originator of it was gone as the means to test for it simply was not there during the time the concept was proposed. (the work done at the Large Hadron Collider in search of the Higgs-Boson particle is one such example….this particle was first suspected to exist in the early 1960’s but only recently was an accelerator of sufficient energy created to be able to actively look for it. This accelerator required advances in materials, computing, and detection/measurement that were well beyond what was available a half century ago.) Such is the nature of science and especially physics.
Not surprisingly, the need to create devices and instruments leads the scientist to seek out those who have both the scientific understanding of the problem and the skills needed to construct the apparatus to the required specification. Glassblowers, machinists, electronics technicians, mechanics, etc., etc. In the course of their collaboration, other ideas can be spurred that branch into other areas. Edison’s incandescent lamp, the ubiquitous lightbulb, gave way to Fleming’s invention of the diode vacuum tube when he was studying the “Edison effect” (the apparent depositing of matter upon the inside of the glass envelope after a period of operation) This later lead to Lee de Forest adding a third element, the grid, and thus the triode–and modern electronics, was born. I alluded to this in a prior post specific to the type T Audion that I have in my collection. This building upon concepts is essential to all advancement. It is simply how it works.
The tools and instruments used not only prove (or disprove) an idea, they also spur those other developments. In the case of science education in schools, these real world demonstrations are vital. The computer is a great tool, you are using it now in order to read these very words……but it is a cold, “black box” of sorts that really does not offer much in the way of inspiration. Computers today are built, with few exceptions, without regard to any consideration of outward industrial design or appearance that would draw in the user. With perhaps the exception of some of the Apple products, they are the epitome of form following function to the point of being rather uninspiring. In the case of the scientific education and real world demonstrations–it is those demonstrations by inspiring instructors with the supporting roles played by interesting devices and real causes and effects that appeal to all the senses that lead to greater interest on the part of the students and hopefully to their own inspirations and quests for discovery and advancements.
Do not be put off by the smoke, smell, crackle, and mess but rather embrace it for it is from that smelly mess that knowledge is born.
