Talk:List of experiments

First off, well, first, second, third, fourth, fifth....

Dammit! Every occurence of the word "discover" which point to theories or laws or interpretations, should be excised with extreme prejudice. Experiments can only "discover" phenomena, not the subsequent interpretation of the phenomena... -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo-stick 18:23, Sep 14, 2003 (UTC)

Ok, how would you prefer it be phrased? Raul654 19:19, 14 Sep 2003 (UTC)

May I also suggest that you add more than one thing at a time, if you're going to keep adding stuff, or maybe use the preview button if you're just correcting mistakes? This page already has an edit history longer than a lot of other articles, and it has only existed for a few hours :) Adam Bishop 19:46, 14 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I know, it's just that since I've started it, I've lost changes 3 times due to people make changes before I could save mine. So I just make quick ones now

Raul654 19:52, 14 Sep 2003 (UTC)

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First, let me apologize, if my comments or summaries of of yesterday have been excessively harsh. I should know better than to edit under stressful conditions.

About the article - I think there might be a problem with the fact that there are still quite a few entries on the list which aren't really experiments, but rather observations. I consider experiments to be acts which are designed beforehands, and then carried out while observing the results. Maybe somebody has a legitimate reason to consider the concept "experiment" less stringently, I don't know... -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo-stick 14:23, Sep 15, 2003 (UTC)

I think all of the listings here can be put into one of 3 catagories -- controlled experiments designed to collect data (Torsion bar, oil drop, etc), accidental observations (Arno and Penzias, Flemming, etc), and discoveries derived from research (which have all been removed). How would you like to list them? Also, I would like to see each experiment have its own article. I created the Torsion bar and the gold foil experiment pages just for that reason. One sentence descriptions on this page are good, but they don't tell enough. (For example, Karl von Frisch decodes the "dance" honeybees use to communicate the location of flowers would be fine if it linked to an article) -- Raul654 17:40, 16 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Wny are three of the most famous Physics experiments of all time (Thompson, Millikan, Rutherford) listed as Chemistry experiments? DJ Clayworth 19:25, 20 Oct 2003 (UTC)

• Whoops. Didn't see your talk comment before I moved them back. Sorry about that. Anyway, I've always heard of them as chemistry experiments, not physics. The rule of thumb I use is that the subatomic goes to physics, the atomic and interatomic go to chemistry. --Raul654 19:43, 20 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I'm basing them simply on the fact that I learned about all of the them in Physics classes, not Chemistry. Thompson is definitely subatomic, arguably so is Millikan. It's not really that important. I felt guilty about leaving the Chemistry section empty, but I really couldn't think of anything to put there. Any ideas? DJ Clayworth 17:06, 21 Oct 2003 (UTC)

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For those of you here who know psychology, http://scholar.uws.edu.au/~13192655/famous.html lists some famous psychology experiments (none of which are listed here), but with very little description. Adding articles and linking to them from here would be much appreciated. I would, but I know nothing about psych. --Raul654 09:16, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

These are famous SOCIAL psychology experiments. Yes, they are famous, but most experiments that are listed already are social psychology experiments too. We could do wich some more from other subfields of psychology. --Heida Maria 05:21, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, Raul654, that was probably me trying to sort out the Psychol section while you were doing something else, and scrunching your edits.

I've had a look at the Australian external links page you found - only one of them is seriously famous, and I have added that. seglea 09:37, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

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A couple of recent changes.

The date of Galileo's rolling-ball experiments is taken from modern work on his manuscripts. What's the source for a date of 1589? It's pretty strongly contradicted by his work during the dozen years after 1589.

Archimedes did much more than find out how to measure volume by displacing water.

Again, what's the basis for the doubt whether Newton really did his prism experiments? Such doubt seems to be a very long way from a consensus among scholars; but maybe someone has a source that rebuts that. Dandrake 06:02, Feb 24, 2004 (UTC)

If my syphillis-ridden memory serves me, Cimon Avaro put that in. You might want to ask him. →Raul654 06:04, Feb 24, 2004 (UTC)

A very late reply... ;) From our article on visible spectrum: "Two of the earliest explanations of the optical spectrum came from Isaac Newton, when he wrote his Opticks, and from Goethe, in his Theory of Colours, although earlier observations had been made by Roger Bacon who first recognized the visible spectrum in a glass of water, four centuries before Newton discovered that prisms could disassemble and reassemble white light.[citation needed]"

This suggests to me that the importance of Newtons splitting the spectrum with a prism was not as great as an experiment as was his expositing it in scientific language. -- Cimon Avaro; on a pogostick. (talk) 23:29, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

P.S. See also Book of Optics. -- Cimon Avaro; on a pogostick. (talk) 23:55, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Commented Newton out; since nobody has argued that his work was more significant than Bacon, Goethe or the discussion in Book of Optics. -- Cimon Avaro; on a pogostick. (talk) 11:30, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Technological experiment

How about adding some technological experiments on to the article. Roscoe x 16:00, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Such as...? →Raul654 20:53, Nov 7, 2004 (UTC)

I can NOT believe that the Pods and Fl. cold fusion experiment is being included in that list of experiments! It was a very very poor experiment that didn't find what it said it had found. It really should be stricken from the record here, or perhaps put in a different section on famous screw ups. It is an interesting technical discussion, since there were many labs that soon thereafter reported also seeing the effect, but all were hoodwinked by a lust to be relevant.

While you're entirely right in your assessment of that bit of pathological science -- an experiment that simply gets worse the more you know about it -- and this would still be true if someone found real cold fusion tomorrow, an eventually validated guess not being a proof of valid procedure -- you'll never get the point across and make it stick.

Anyway, it is, so far as I notice in a quick inspection, the only experiment listed that is not generally accepted as valid. For that reason it could be moved to a section for still-controversial experiments, if one weren't to delete it entirely. It certainly shouldn't remain here in the company of Eratosthenes (Hey, duplicate entries for him. Silly.) and Meselson & Stahl and Rutherford.

BTW please remember to sign your Talk entries with four tilde ~ characters. --Dandrake 23:03, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)

Chemistry

This article had almost no chemistry content, and now maybe I added too much. I may have added some content that would better fall under "discoveries" or "thought experiments." Feel free to move things around. Flying Jazz 04:29, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Biology

Several weeks ago I tried to add several experiments to this page. They were shortly deleted by a self-appointed expert, named Raoul, who apparently has a background in engineering and places specious restrictions on what he considers an experiment. Something done in a laboratory that requires observation, deduction and conclusions resulting in new hypothesis and further experiment apparently doesn't count for Mr. Expert Raoul. For example, he would exclude Alexander Flemings discovery of penicillin, althought it is based on an observation (an inhibitory zone), a deduction (the zone is due to the secretion of an inhibitory substance by the fungus), and further experiments to prove this hypothesis. On similar grounds, he also exlcudes the development of the Sanger method of DNA sequencing and other additions of mine. How do we go about getting Mr. Raoul's priviledges revoked?

The heart of the problem is that the anonymous user does not comprehend the differences between an experiment, an observation, and the invention of a method. Raul654 21:09, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

I presented my argument with Mr. Raoul to a group of chemists at my local meeting of the American Chemical Society this evening. Everyone agreed with me that Flemming's laboratory work that resulted in the isolation of penicillin should be considered experiments. Raoul is the one who lacks the frame of reference to know what is an experiment. He is, however, smart enough to know that "does not comprehend" is an insulting put-down.

So, the three disputed "experiments" are: (1) Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin, (2) Herbert Boyer and Stanley Cohen demonstration of selective cloning of genes in bacteria, and (3) Frederick Sanger demonstration of the dideoxy- or chain termination method for determining DNA sequences 1975. As I understand it Fleming discovered penicillin by acident and didn't intend to produce it. This suggests that it was not a system designed to have a result that pertained to a particular hypothesis. I must say that I'm inclined to agree that this is not an experiment, although I'm perfectly happy to discuss it.

I agree with the anonymous user that the other two are experiments, however. Here is a hypothesis: "the chain termination method is an effective method for determining DNA sequences". It is a perfectly reasonable scientific hypothesis which was confirmed by the actions of Sanger. I don't understand what's relevantly different about the resulting use to which the hypothesis was put (i.e. that it was used in other scientific experiments and not "out there in the world). Again, I'm happy to talk about this more.--best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 23:21, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

A method is not an experiment. Sanger's method can be used to design experiments (and it has been of great importance in the areas of bioinformatics and computational biology) but the invention of the method is not itself is *not* an experiment - it does not answer any scientifically important question (look at the others on this list - does the neutrino exist? What is the circumference of the earth? What is the speed of light? 'etc). Tacking a hollow hypothesis onto it does not make it an experiment either. Raul654 23:29, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

As far as Boyer/Cohen, I think I removed that without realizing it when I zapped Sanger and Flemming. Raul654 23:31, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for responding so quickly Raul, I think its a new record! :) We're agreed then to but Boyer/Cohen back. Regarding Sanger: There are two scientific things going on: (1) a method is invented and (2) the efficacy of a method is confirmed. Certainly the first is not an experiment, it is an invention. But the second seems very much like an experiment to me. It does answer a scientifically important question, namely: is that method efficacious? I don't understand why this is scientifically "less important" than asking "do neutrinos exist?" In fact, it is likely that many scientific hypotheses depend on the efficacy of the method. Therefore, the demonstration of the effectiveness of the method ramifies through many different scientific experiments. I'm not sure what you mean by "hollow hypothesis" either. It has content and was likely phrased that way in the publication that resulted from the efforts of Sanger. --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 23:37, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Physics

Does the Cockcroft–Walton generator really belong here? It's a device, not an experiment; however, it was used for a critical experiment in physics history. Perhaps we need a separate article about Cockcroft and Walton's particle accelerator? —Benjamin Barenblat (talk) 01:03, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Physics Discoveries

I've noticed that most of the big experiments noted in this article, particularly in physics, tend to not include new millennia experiments. There are plenty of great experiments that I believe deserve a spot on the list. These include

1. LIGO

2. E821

3. Higgs Boson

4. Ice Cube

-- Rmehtany

There are links to experiments

These lists include experiments that have their own page in Wikipedia but are not included here for some reason. ReyHahn (talk) 10:16, 17 November 2023 (UTC)