The Life of an Experiment
From idea to published paper, every experiment follows a similar path of inquiry
By Amy Mast
A scientist has an idea, does an experiment, gets a result,
and writes a paper about it. Simple, right? Yes – and no.
If you've ever hung out with a little kid who asks "why"
over and over and over for every answer you give, it's more like
that. From the time a scientist finds a question he or she wants
to ask, to the time the answer to that question is publishable as a
paper, several people, states and countries can be involved, and
each question only leads to asking more.
Stuart Brown, a user with a home
lab at UCLA, examines paperwork
during his time in cell 7.
Credit: Larry Gordon
As the director of DC user programs and as a researcher himself,
Eric Palm knows a thing or two about the process of planning,
guiding and publishing an experiment. Rather than a straight line
from start to finish, he describes the process of gathering data as
circular.
"With any halfway decent experiment,
you end up with more questions than
you answer, and that's the cool thing
about science," said Palm. "Science isn't
about determining actual truth – it's
about getting to our best understanding
of the world we live in. We can get to a
better and better understanding, but
each new level kind of brilliantly reveals
all these things we still don't know."
Users who come to the Magnet Lab are
in the experimental, data-gathering
phase of this process. Stuart Brown of
UCLA is a longtime user who makes
his living learning about how matter
behaves at very low temperatures. He
visited the lab this fall, using a resistive
magnet to discover more about the
properties of a superconductor he
finds exciting.
If they were on a soap opera together,
superconductors and magnets would
have a stormy relationship. Magnetism has a nasty tendency
to kill superconductivity, and Brown's at the lab to study a
superconductor that performs better than usual in a high
magnetic field.
A typical experiment involves:
- Asking a question.
- Deciding which tools will be best to get an answer.
- Requesting magnet time and scheduling a trip to the lab.
- Working with his own team, plus magnet lab support staff, to gather
experimental data.
- Going home with the data and figuring out what it means.
- Assembling data into a paper that includes the original question, a
description of the experiment and figures.
- Submitting the completed paper for publication.
- Making any changes reviewers suggest.
- Celebrating!
For his experiment, Brown is using the magnet in cell 7, set to
a magnetic field between 15 and 30 tesla. This magnet is ideal
for experiments when a user needs to be able to note all the
subtleties of his or her data.
About 1,000 users such as Brown gather
data at one of the lab's seven user
programs each year. All prospective
users apply for magnet time, then wait
to see if they're one of the 25
to 50 percent whose applications are
accepted. Because magnet science is a
comparatively small field, most users have
been here before (though about 1 in 5
resistive magnet users during the past
year were making their first trip).
"With the type of experiments that
I do, from start to finish it can take a
couple of years before I'm ready to share
some data," Brown explained. "You can
conjecture at first but you don't know
what's going to happen
when your sample goes
into the magnet, and
you have to have the
patience to see where
it takes you. There are
always unanticipated
circumstances, because
you're not measuring
where someone has
been before."
Related Links
- Scientific Journals
A database of articles published in scientific journals by users and Magnet Lab-affiliated scientists and engineers.
- Research Reports
A database of research by Mag Lab users and affiliated faculty, including the most recent research. Some of this research is published in scholarly journals.
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