Document your results and share!

By Richard Hull

Amateur Scientists today have opportunities not shared by their predecessors. A burgeoning high tech surplus marketplace filled with ever-newer used equipment, supplies and materials allow for more advanced amateur experimentation.

The Internet is a source of information, materials, special interest science groups and discussion boards. It is a tool, which, if used wisely, can save a lot of time and money.

Amateur scientists tend to fill a broad range of personalities and backgrounds. The age group span is also incredibly broad. I am still a very active amateur scientist at 53!

The major thrust of this article is to show you the many and varied ways in which you can share your work with others. The number one way is to put the results of your work on the internet via a personal web page or send the results to one of the topic specific discussion groups which are springing up all over the Internet.

Another method which is especially important if you are sharing with close friends or fellow amateur scientists who really need to view the epitome of your method or process, is to video tape the effort and mail it to them. Small money making opportunities exist here for the adroit amateur scientist. If your efforts are really stunning or of broad interest to what might be a large enough audience, you could sell the tapes, (if well done), to others interested in the topic of your labors. The income can be plowed into more equipment or supplies to keep the effort going at your end without having to forego buying the baby new shoes.

It is readily apparent that many amateurs do not maintain the classic lab notebook. So why not take up a video or still camera to document your work. This is not only for your own review, but the critical review of others who may just make helpful suggestions concerning your efforts, which elude you at the moment.

Other than for a very small group of secretive "Lone Wolf" amateur scientists, most of us seek to share our work and experiences in the lab with others of like interest. Whether it is via a science fairs for the younger amateur scientists or via the Internet discussion groups or videotape, such efforts are pleasing and educational for all involved.

Let us speak directly now to specifics. The many and varied ways of disseminating information in this information age allow for a lot of contact denied our predecessors. Desktop publishing on the computer allows paper reports and even books-on-demand to be prepared and distributed. Scanners and digital cameras can link photos to the documents, which give a finished appearance, and clarification to the printed word. For indeed, a picture is worth a thousand words.

The fantastic growth of the Internet has spawned a large number of informational sources ranging from government labs and universities to individual efforts to teach or inform interested people about a number of important technologies and disciplines. Artful use of a search engine on the World Wide Web can lay at your feet a vast storehouse of information and ‘kindred spirits". Likewise, you can supply the data via a WebPage or discussion group. The problem with the Internet is what might be best termed broad bandwidth and high noise factor. As a totally open worldwide forum, there are a lot of voices, many of them spouting incorrect or incomplete information. It is often a daunting task to separate the wheat from the chaff in the cacophony of voices, each claiming to have the "straight story". This places a burden on your sharing of information to remain objective, honest and most of all, to the point, lest you just increase the bandwidth and noise factor by commission or omission. Think before you post, publish, or distribute that video.

Peer Review

The Internet is not "peer-reviewed"! In a way, this is good. As a man who has had a professional scientific paper bounce around the "peer-review" process for over 3 years and multiple revisions, I can tell you that unless you have every sentence tight and a neat little bow on the finished process, it will never see the light of day! My "beef" with the system is that they really want a summary where you attempt to explain within the framework of "accepted science" the complete reason for the results of your effort or experiment. This can be bad if you haven’t the experience to link your experimental results to known science, or, worse still, if the results seem to lie outside of the framework of accepted science. Woe betide anyone trying this route within peer reviewed material! It will, indeed, be found that 99.9999% of all results of any experiment can be handled within the framework of established science. Still, we should want to hear about that .0001% which can’t fit! It might represent breakthrough experimental discovery.

I have always felt, that it should be sufficient to do "novel experiment" and report accurate and clear results and not necessarily expound on the delicate details of why you got the results you did. Others may be vastly more capable of interpreting your results, especially if you, the experimenter, are at a total loss. There is no shame in being "clueless" as to the exact causative agent of the outcome of well-done experiment. This was commonly done in the eighteenth and nineteenth century as "gentleman scientists", often self funded, wrote papers and gave lecturers before the learned scientific societies of Europe. Many times, the results of their experiments were incredulous and even bordered on the absurd. (X-rays – Roentgen, artificial radioactivity – Becquerel) Explanation lagged years behind discovery! Engineers had produced thousands of x-ray tubes and machines and medical science had taken millions of X-rays before the physicists divined out the real process behind their production. It is a classic case of technology and application far out pacing physics ability to understand the core process.

It is also proof that the "why", while satisfying, is often not necessary for the "doing" or the "developing". As Franklin said, "Let the experiment be done!" to which must be added, "Let the results be published!"

The tools of the modern amateur scientist for recording results can be the digital still camera, the video camera, any number of data logging and chart generating computer hardware/software combinations. Most modern digital storage scopes have a simple "print" button on the front to print the entire captured scope screen to any common computer printer. Spread sheets and other lab or electronic specialty programs assist in collation and presentation of data. A few programs such as Spice, P Spice, Lab view, etc. can even model a situation and allow the model to be "tweaked" to see how the proposed system performs. A word of warning….. Nothing replaces the physical experiment, and hands on effort. These modeling programs can only have so many variables and they are assumed to be stable variables derived from ideal sources. A trained engineer and experimenter does not put blind faith in a computer model for these reasons.

Sharing your data is more than just shoving videotapes into the mail, posting on the Internet or sharing photos or computer images of your work. It demands some forethought in organization. Also, presentation in a manner, which will not only supply adequate information, but be easy and pleasing to read and view. In any event, sharing you data and techniques in any form is better than locking the results of your labors away for eyes only, and represents the true spirit of the scientific investigator.

Examples my own of sharing info

Naturally, one must lead by example, and therefore, what follows is a short list of my efforts in sharing results of my amateur scientific investigations.

I have kept a rather continuous record of my work with Tesla coils in the form of 60 two-hour video report tapes produced over the last ten years. Likewise, I have special tapes on the Farnsworth Fusor; A solar powered self-levitating, bearingless motor. simple magnetics, etc.

On the Internet I have posted hundreds of messages chronicling our work with Tesla coils on the Tesla coil builders list serve. I am also a frequent poster on the high voltage list serve and the Farnsworth fusion bulletin board. Photos of my work with the Tesla coils have been posted on numerous sites. My fusor work has been archived at the HV list serve and many photos of my recent fusor work can be seen on a German website. I have a detailed report on the basic fusor published in both the Bell Jar (amateur vacuum periodical) and the Electric Spacecraft Journal (catering to the thoughts of the next generation of space propulsion methods – preferably involving no throw away mass.). Other publications in the past have photos of both my Tesla coil work and my Fusor efforts, including National Geographic, American Scientist and others. Several major television shows have featured my work. The BBC, PBS, The Discovery Channel and A&E have all featured my work in the past 10 years.

Now it’s your turn…

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