Sunday, October 23, 2005

Home Lab

One Hundred Forty Sixth Post: Home Lab

You ever wonder if you could make discoveries out of the basement, garage, or shed? To have your own little corner with all the cool equipment. But could you expect to produce discoveries in areas that labs and teams of people couldn’t find with million dollar equipment? Well, maybe not, but this area is yours to dream in.

Spiderman studied at the University, but he maintained a laboratory in his Aunt’s basement. He was glad to get a job at a lab and admitted it was nice that the equipment hadn’t come from a mail order catalog. So working in a lab must be nice, but surely Spiderman would agree that home laboratory certainly has its own applications. The young Peter Parker (Spiderman) spent many hours in his basement lab. Isn’t the home lab where all scientist start?

The first thing home labs lack is the equipment. So the experiment won’t be about putting a plane in a wind tunnel or smashing protons in a particle accelerator. But what the lab lacks in shear power it makes up for with the scientist’s, whose lab it is, ingenuity. The scientist may not be designing stealth air fighters, but they concentrate on simpler techniques that could lead to just as big discoveries. For example, a scientist testing an engine that runs on ethanol could modify an existing small engine and test what setting of air and fuel mixture works the best. The scientist can also be working on methods to create that alcohol.

So the small lab is based on the fact that discoveries, sometimes large, can be found by relatively simple methods. The key is in finding those methods. There is a lot to be said of home laboratories and lots to discuss, but until then....... May the Creative Force be with You

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