Experiment Design Thoughts

The major insight is that rather obscure experiments might be particularly provocative to students imagination. They are uncluttered and the effect is hard to ignore. Cognitively, it cuts through cultural conditioning to that loads student's perceptions and renders them agreeable to our education system. I am not some far left alternative radical here, but a scientist who has made steady progress understanding through a series of frontiers. The is nothing special about this, its just what you do. As you progress there is a smaller and smaller fraction of people you associate with who get there is a gap between what we are capable of knowing and what circulates in common cultural consciousnesses. There is no particular drama here, until things reach crisis points. Generally I find, that it is a life threaten illness of a person or the someone they care for, and there is a requirement to interact with advanced technology and concepts that till that point have been pushed into the background. In overview, I make no particular judgement on this state of affairs, there is nothing particularly positive that some on attending to daily affairs and domestic activity can do with electron spin. At no point in the day is relevant. Yet the metric, relevance to the conduct of personal affairs although seductive and pleasant runs a course to tragedy. My mind turns to some industrial accidents I have been as a first responder and disconnected power or poured water on acid burns. For those people the connection with the reality of our underlying technology mattered. Rather than being a point of contempt that someone understood and knew what to do, there was appreciation that there was one in a hundred who wasn't like the crowd. I think here we are not going for a big measurable hit in understanding in our kids. We are not going particularly a rise in the score in our testing which has been leveled out across so many variables like social background and time (If the testing yields better performance this year and it would have shown better performance had it been used in previous years ... that is not valid or equitable). I suppose what I am interested in is seeding curiously in a few, perhaps one. The profound thing is that new insight is something used when it is most critical and it tends to be most critical in a situation that no one could predict and we can somehow get that one in hundred thinking outside the square makes that critical difference. In the quiet time you share with people after those big accidents we talk about this sort of thing and how society as a whole doesn't get it.

So what do we have in mind. The Einstein de Haas experiment. Einstein is a big draw card here. He is embedded as a kind of symbol in our cultural language. People ask who is the de Haas guy and is he really necessary. It is interesting when people make this comment as they reveal how they are thinking with Einstein as a proxy for actual understanding. It is bit like, for me, attending a piano recital and the musician walks out on the stage and says "Piano, not just any piano but a grand concert piano that can sound awesome to people who can hear. Piano, piano, grand piano Yamaha!", then the people around me applaud saying "Bravo!".

In the circumstances one has to understand the absolute lack, vacuum of understanding before you. To say that Einstein fudged his analysis, fell folly to bias for scientific results that confirmed what he was thinking would be like saying the Queen or the Pope were just ordinary people. So one saves this for later, years later for your one in a hundred student who is going to resonate with the profound. Not that Einstein was wrong, that is hardly profound. What is profound that we are immersed in a cultural, to borrow some terminology here, field that does not allow him to be wrong. To be more precise our culture does not allow us to think that he is wrong.

The experiment itself is humble, profound and connects with our universe much as people imagine a simple crystal pendant connects. Instead of a quartz crystal we have and iron crystal pendant. Now it is not a crystal in our cultural frame work, and yet it is a crystal in the world of science. We are talking about using this to transport yours, if not yours then perhaps the intellect of a son or daughter into the realm of science. This may be hard to take and if you feel the urge to grab a pitch fork and immerse yourself in the sensuality of a angry mob think laterally. I am in Australia, and most probably is a sizable walk, climb swim to get here. Alternatively if you fly, and particularly if you are in the United States you may find it hard getting the pitch fork into the cabin. Of course you pitch fork is made of iron, and I would kindly point that out to you on your arrival and compliment you on your insight. Angry? Take your frustrations out on a paper clip. Show them who is boss by bending it. See if you bend it it shows its weakness, being easier to bend each time. Go on, it is about time you showed that paper clip who is boss. Keep on bending it! It is useless now its got a kink in it. We scientist call it metal fatigue. That paper clip is now really second rate, bend it until it snaps. It is now microscope or hand lens time. If you used clip bending as therapy it might be time to take a break and let calm return as holding something steady and thinking requires a kind of presence in the here and now. It is likely that the majority of other readers just found a paper clip, metal coat hanger, but of wire and just bent it with not much fuss, just quietly, but that doesn't matter. Yes, it also true that probably even more readers, just read on and thought I will probably do that one latter, maybe. Maybe most readers stopped reading earlier on, particularly once they read about Einstein making a mistake or when some one who was not Einstein was mentioned. That's right de Haas. You will notice, however that your paper clip, or wire coat hanger, or bit of wire is matt on the surface that has fatigued and broken. You may also have touched it and felt it was rough. It is okay if you when ahead and touched it before the internet told you to, no one will know. Now under the microscope you will see little crystals jutting up. Why its just like Switzerland. Now you've seen it there is no need to ever visit the place. You may have a secret feeling of pride. Did you make those crystals? Yes you did! Clever you, you crystal maker you. As you twisted the crystal boundaries grew, the little area heated up. Good on you for noticing that. Other people don't care they just want to know immediately how does it effect them. Just remember it is the good engineers who check every inch of planes to make sure that it doesn't effect them, They are looking for fatigue, calling out to those crystals and hearing their little cries. No one wants anyone to be sucked out of a plane at high altitude because their window opened due to metal fatigue.

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