Here They Are, Science's 10 Most Beautiful Experiments

By GEORGE JOHNSON
Published: September 24, 2002
Whether they are blasting apart subatomic particles in accelerators, sequencing the genome or analyzing the wobble of a distant star, the experiments that grab the world's attention often cost millions of dollars to execute and produce torrents of data to be processed over months by supercomputers. Some research groups have grown to the size of small companies.

But ultimately science comes down to the individual mind grappling with something mysterious. When Robert P. Crease, a member of the philosophy department at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and the historian at Brookhaven National Laboratory, recently asked physicists to nominate the most beautiful experiment of all time, the 10 winners were largely solo performances, involving at most a few assistants. Most of the experiments -- which are listed in this month's Physics World -- took place on tabletops and none required more computational power than that of a slide rule or calculator.

What they have in common is that they epitomize the elusive quality scientists call beauty. This is beauty in the classical sense: the logical simplicity of the apparatus, like the logical simplicity of the analysis, seems as inevitable and pure as the lines of a Greek monument. Confusion and ambiguity are momentarily swept aside, and something new about nature becomes clear.

The list in Physics World was ranked according to popularity, first place going to an experiment that vividly demonstrated the quantum nature of the physical world. But science is a cumulative enterprise -- that is part of its beauty. Rearranged chronologically and annotated below, the winners provide a bird's-eye view of more than 2,000 years of discovery.

more:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D06E6D91439F937A1575AC0A9649C8B63

The sheer elegance of inferring the earth's circumference from measurements of cast shadows at noon, or demonstrating planetary rotation with a suspended weight is absolutely amazing. Those are all great choices.

Chemistry and Biology have their own Beautiful Experiments.

If we were to pick the 30 most Beautiful Science Experiments I suspect Physics, Chemistry, and Biology would have close to equal representation.

It isn't just physics. The chapter on Lavoisier was fabulous and included a discussion about the work of Priestly and Scheele among others. This book is really about the foundation of science. I'm loving it!

He was great on Colbert a few months ago. Here's the link to the video:

http://www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport/videos.jhtml?videoId=167602