Comments on: Adam Savage on observation, thinking and scientific discoveries

By: decrepadmin

decrepadmin — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 12:54:40 +0000

Jeebs man!

I am suitably chastened

That was one of the possibilities I mentioned; that he simply marked the time by the sun itself along the E/W axis. But that’s the awesome thing about historic science; he figured this out with sticks… and careful observation, and got pretty damn close. I’d love for people to start observing opportunities around them for understanding the universe. Like quartz inclusions in decorative boulders, shadows moving across a restaurant table during lunch, Venus and Mars “together” in the sky, algae growing on a wall, stuff like that. Even people without laboratories can have fun making observations and thinking about them.

Yeah, I wasn’t super-popular as a kid. That’s why I love geek culture so much today.

By: Ole Phat Stu

Ole Phat Stu — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 16:56:46 +0000

He did NOT have to know the time.
Noon is DEFINED (inter alia) as shortest shadow.
Jeebs man!

By: Chas, PE SE

Chas, PE SE — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 15:12:03 +0000

RE Eratosthenes: Somewhere, buried in the story is the fact that the sun wqas visible at the bottom of the well at noon on the Solstice. Eratosthenes would have to make his measurment on the preceding/next Solstice. Change of Longitude between the well and Alexandria would not be a major factor, because the Sun would be due South of Alex a few minutes later.

The difficulty in teaching Science is that we have to teach a lot of facts that have already been discovered, and the Scientific Method which is the way these facts were determined, in the same class. When I do Mad Scientist answers, I try to get the kid to do experiments to try and determine the fact himself.