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Books > Science & Mathematics > Science: general issues > Scientific equipment & techniques, laboratory equipment > General
How do scientists impact society in the twenty-first century? Many
scientists are increasingly interested in the impact that their
research will have on the public. Scientists likewise must answer
the question above when applying for funding from government
agencies, particularly as part of the 'Broader Impacts' criterion
of proposals to the US National Science Foundation. This book
equips scientists in all disciplines to do just that, by providing
an overview of the origins, history, rationale, examples, and case
studies of broader impacts, primarily drawn from the author's
experiences over the past five decades. Beyond including theory and
evidence, it serves as a 'how to' guide for best practices for
scientists. Although this book primarily uses examples from the
NSF, the themes and best practices are applicable to scientists and
applications around the world where funding also requires impacts
and activities that benefit society.
Maple is a comprehensive symbolic mathematics application which is
well suited for demonstrating physical science topics and solving
associated problems. Because Maple is such a rich application, it
has a somewhat steep learning curve. Most existing texts
concentrate on mathematics; the Maple help facility is too detailed
and lacks physical science examples, many Maple-related websites
are out of date giving readers information on older Maple versions.
This book records the author's journey of discovery; he was
familiar with SMath but not with Maple and set out to learn the
more advanced application. It leads readers through the basic Maple
features with physical science worked examples, giving them a firm
base on which to build if more complex features interest them.
For most of the history of scientific endeavour, science has been
recorded on paper. In this digital era, however, there is
increasing pressure to abandon paper in favour of digital tools.
Despite the benefits, there are barriers to the adoption of such
tools, not least their usability. As the relentless development of
technology changes the way we work, we need to ensure that the
design of technology not only overcomes these barriers, but
facilitates us as scientists and supports better practice within
science. This book examines the importance of record-keeping in
science, current record-keeping practices, and the role of
technology for enabling the effective capture, reuse, sharing, and
preservation of scientific data. Covering the essential areas of
electronic laboratory notebooks (ELNs) and digital tools for
recording scientific data, including an overview of the current
data management technology available and the benefits and pitfalls
of using these technologies, this book is a useful tool for those
interested in implementing digital data solutions within their
research groups or departments. This book also provides insight
into important factors to consider in the design of digital tools
such as ELNs for those interested in producing their own tools.
Finally, it looks at the role of current technology and then
considers how that technology might develop in the future to better
support scientists in their work, and in capturing and sharing the
scientific record.
Replication, the independent confirmation of experimental results
and conclusions, is regarded as the "gold standard" in science.
This book examines the question of successful or failed
replications and demonstrates that that question is not always easy
to answer. It presents clear examples of successful replications,
the discoveries of the Higgs boson and of gravity waves. Failed
replications include early experiments on the Fifth Force, a
proposed modification of Newton's Law of universal gravitation, and
the measurements of "G," the constant in that law. Other case
studies illustrate some of the difficulties and complexities in
deciding whether a replication is successful or failed. It also
discusses how that question has been answered. These studies
include the "discovery" of the pentaquark in the early 2000s and
the continuing search for neutrinoless double beta decay. It argues
that although successful replication is the goal of scientific
experimentation, it is not always easily achieved.
The electric dipole moment (EDM) challenge measures a non-zero
proton EDM value and this book suggests how the challenge can be
met. Any measurably large proton EDM would violate the standard
model. The method to be employed uses an intense beam of 'frozen
spin' protons circulating for hour-long times in a storage ring
'trap'. The smallness of EDMs allows them to test existing
theories, but also makes them hard to measure. Such EDM experiments
are inexpensive, at least compared to building accelerators of
ever-greater energy.
For many years, evidence suggested that all solid materials either
possessed a periodic crystal structure as proposed by the Braggs or
they were amorphous glasses with no long-range order. In the 1970s,
Roger Penrose hypothesized structures (Penrose tilings) with
long-range order which were not periodic. The existence of a solid
phase, known as a quasicrystal, that possessed the structure of a
three dimensional Penrose tiling, was demonstrated experimentally
in 1984 by Dan Shechtman and colleagues. Shechtman received the
2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery. The discovery and
description of quasicrystalline materials provided the first
concrete evidence that traditional crystals could be viewed as a
subset of a more general category of ordered materials. This book
introduces the diversity of structures that are now known to exist
in solids through a consideration of quasicrystals (Part I) and the
various structures of elemental carbon (Part II) and through an
analysis of their relationship to conventional crystal structures.
Both quasicrystals and the various allotropes of carbon are
excellent examples of how our understanding of the microstructure
of solids has progressed over the years beyond the concepts of
traditional crystallography.
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