What has become of the Gentleman Scientist?

[fivemack]

I wonder if I can hash together an idea of the level of science doable in the contemporary garage.

People make telescopes; reflecting ones usually, because the test equipment for interesting refracting designs is complicated (optical flats larger than the lens under test were needed in at least one book I looked at). Amateur astronomers exist in large numbers, and manage to do quite exciting things with CCDs; any result from before 1950 is replicable, I think (since the 36" telescope in Sydney with a good CCD is at least comparable to the 200" on Mount Palomar using film).

Amateur rocketry seems to exist on a continuum from the little Estes 1/2A motors, through Tripoli's 10-foot-tall rockets going up to 10km or so, through John Carmack to the X-Prize.

There was a Victorian hobby of microscopy, which doesn't seem so visible nowadays. Though I'm quite tempted by the Intel video-microscope.

You can do fairly impressive electronics - there are hobbyists who can do BGA assembly, though soldering a $400 part to a board that took two weeks to etch and assemble by using a toaster oven takes serious cojones. I believe some people have manufactured transistors, but I have a feeling nobody's built integrated circuits - there's the combination there of incredibly noxious chemistry, very small vibration tolerance and utterly pedantic cleanliness requirement. There's someone over on aceshardware.com/forum who built a 32016 machine and wrote the OS for it, which I'd have thought slightly beyond the limits of individual endeavour had it not been done.

Not all that much particle physics is possible; there are 1MV van-de-graff generators around, and small cloud chambers for looking at cosmic rays, but bulk liquid hydrogen for large cloud chambers feels impractical in garages, and I don't think antiproton-creation energies are even close to accessible (positrons might be); you start to run into trouble avoiding irradiation, I suspect.

Developing photos is I think a fading hobby because digital makes it so much easier to get good results; but I have a feeling that people have managed to process colour film despite the temperature requirements, which makes me reckon that PCR might be possible in a (well-insulated) garage. I don't know enough molecular biology to know of other fun things to do; I suspect there's a problem getting enough official proofs of virtue to be allowed to get and store the reagants in the garage.

I'm sure I've missed out whole fields of endeavour here, and misplaced my bars most dreadfully — but I'm equally sure that jonsinger and erikvolson are reading this and know what else to suggest and where to put the bar.

I'll summarise interesting discussion and put it up on tom.womack.net somewhere.

Comments

[scottscidmore.livejournal.com]

There are spots in physics where 'garage science' or 'Gentleman Scientist' is still useful. More true for biology, chemistry, and their overlap, although there certainly are regions in those beyond the reach of GS - ESR, hi-res NMR, IR spectrometer, and mass specs are not in the price range of most garage science although perhaps some Gentleman Scientists might be able to afford such. PCR - it's not hard to make pretty good controlled temperature units these days, for not too much money; an oven, triac, and couple of ICs can do it.

But it is true that much of physics has moved into a energy realm that is impractical for small enterprises. But historically there were classes of research that typical GS could not carry out. Count Rumford had access to cannon boring equipment and castings, as well as helpers and a good chunk of money of his own. Bessemer had a set-up that most researchers did not have access to. OK, in both cases the cost was proportionally much less than SLAC or the Supercollider, but there was still some limiting of access.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

For a long, long time, "The Amateur Scientist" column in Scientific American was a window into such hobbies. I expect it still is, but I'm not reading the magazine these days. There were books of collected columns, which you might enjoy looking at. Recently I heard of a CD-ROM collection... let's see, here it is.

There was a neat magazine for amateur scientists attempted about a decade ago, but it didn't last long.

Geology? Fossil hunting? I don't know anything about these.

I know a guy who restored a 1960s transmission electron microscope at home, and another guy who is about to attempt the same. The second guy has built homemade cyclotrons; not sure what energy he's gotten to.

During the Eighties I met a bunch of holography hobbyists. A local college taught classes in making single-beam holograms, which were much less fussy than traditional two-beam method, so a community of artists and techies formed to swap tips and socialize. I'm not still in touch with those people, though.

I find the existence of 3-D modeling and animation hobbyists intriguing, but maybe that's not the kind of science you were talking about. Woulda been science fiction when I was your age...

One of the my friends bought an otherwise worthess piece of land in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, completely covered by mine tailings, in order to have someplace to practice making fireworks and large bonfires (like hundreds of pounds of thermite or burning magnesium).

I'm not much at building cool stuff or doing real science at home-- but I really enjoy the company of those who do such things. I'll forward your essay to some of them and ask for comments.

Re:

[jojomojo.livejournal.com]

Do you know how far he is from Marquette? One of my wife's love interests lives there :)

(I'm in the Lower Peninsula myself)

Re:

[sraun]

The hunk of land is somewhere north of Houghton - I don't recall exactly where.

My understanding is that it gets extensively used for a week every summer, but I don't know what other usage it gets.

I really do want to make it up for one of those weeks sometime - or at least the final weekend.

Propeller-head hobbies

[(Anonymous)]

Hmm... I don't feel like getting a LJ account just to post this, but:

1) there are a few home-built scanning tunneling microscopes out there.

2) there's a home-built laser community.

3) amateur (as opposed to model) rocketry is active (amateurs fly much bigger rockets and often home-brew their engines).

4) there's a large and very active community involved with home-built CNC machine tools. These range from full-blown computer-controlled metal lathes and milling machines to small wood routers based on Dremel tools. This area has really taken off in the last couple of years, mainly due to the availability of reasonably-priced surplus stepper and servo motors and PC hardware powerful enough to run them. Also, of course, the availability of cheap Chinese lathes and milling machines of acceptable quality hasn't hurt. There's even a GPL Linux-based CNC package called EMC.

Having a CNC lathe and milling machine would make many of the *other* scientific hobbies much easier.

Google should turn up plenty of information on all of these.

[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

If theb Intel video microscope is the "play" one my mum's got it and she doesn't rate it much..

[fallenpegasus]

You want to immediately order the "Lindsay's Technical Books" catalog from http://www.lindsaybks.com/

[addedentry.livejournal.com]

I don't know if your idea of scientific research includes observation, rather than experiment, but meteorology and biology (at least at a macro scale) are obvious places for amateur contributions. The UK Phenology Network invites people to record seasonal natural phenomena.

There is a Society for Amateur Scientists but, as far as I can tell from its website, it focuses more on science education.