Laboratory experiment

“ Professor Schäfer expressed the opinion, anticipated and shared by many other investigators, that the progress of chemical experiment renders it probable that further steps, culminating in the successful construction of "living" matter in the laboratory, are not beset by any insurmountable obstacles and will sooner or later be accomplished. ”

“ Admitting that in certain cases a single experiment in the laboratory is insufficient to reproduce the phenomenon, yet a series of experiments, each of which would be performed to make clear the action of one of the components of the problem, would represent it in its entirety. ”

“ The experiments which were detailed in the Bakerian lecture read during the absence of Davy on November 15, were made in July and August.
On August 30, after entering things wanted, he wrote in the Laboratory Book:
‘No experiments are to be made or carried on in the laboratory without the consent and approbation of the Professor of Chemistry. The attempt at original experiment, unless preceded by knowledge, merely interferes with the progress of discovery. ”

“ Analysis of this crude kind does no more than give us our bearings. If we are to lay out the facts with scientific accuracy, we must carry actions into the laboratory, and examine them under experimental conditions. We do this by way of the ‘reaction experiment.’
§ 55. The Reaction Experiment.—The reaction experiment comes to us, of all unlikely things, by the road of astronomy. In the old days, before electrical instruments were invented, astronomers used to time the passage of a star across the meridian of their observatory by means of the eye-and-ear method. ”

“ The second corroboration of the theory is by direct experiment, according to the canon of the Method of Difference. We can, by cooling the surface of any body, find in all cases some temperature (more or less inferior to that of the surrounding air, according to its hygrometric condition) at which dew will begin to be deposited. Here, too, therefore, the causation is directly proved. We can, it is true, accomplish this only on a small scale, but we have ample reason to conclude that the same operation, if conducted in nature's great laboratory, would equally produce the effect. ”

“ The laboratory experiments should be both qualitative and quantitative in character. They should on the one hand illustrate the peculiar properties of the substances studied and the typical concomitant changes of chemical action, but on the other hand a sufficient number of quantitative exercises in the laboratory should be introduced to bring home to the student the laws of combining weights and volumes, thus giving him the idea that chemistry is exact and that quantitative relations always obtain when chemical action takes place. ”

“ They did not project from the laboratory. He always worked in the open when the light was to be produced. Once the experiment took a serious turn. The lights had flickered and gone. Dr. Schermerhorn had returned to his laboratory. ”

“ That which he gets which is of most worth in his course in a physical laboratory is not a familiarity with the principles of the science, but a training in the methods of investigation in use among physicists, including a knowledge of the use and abuse of experiment and the necessary limits of our knowledge derived therefrom. ”

“ Before performing an experiment, the student is advised to review those topics presented in the text which have a bearing upon the experiment, so that a clear conception may be gained of the relationship between the laboratory work and that of the class room. The student should endeavor to cultivate the power of observation and to grasp the principle involved in the work, rather than do it in a merely mechanical and perfunctory way. ”

“ A station for experimental biology must have not only the proper equipment for breeding and rearing organisms under natural conditions, but also for artificially changing and controlling the external factors of the environment. The physico-chemical laboratory (Fig. 10) provides the substances used as variable external factors and also to determine the physico-chemical properties of the biologically important colloids. ”

“ Enough has been said to show distinctly the main points in favor of a laboratory specially endowed for research, and some of the chief considerations which must arise in its establishment. Such a laboratory as is here indicated, a laboratory in which many specialists could combine forces in the more difficult fundamental investigations of physical science, surely ought not to remain long a mere fabric of the imagination, a misty dream of the future. It should be founded—whether by an individual or by the nation it matters little. ”

“ We have already pointed out the possibility of going through a course of physics without any special apparatus, we shall now endeavour to show our readers the method of performing some experiments in chemistry without a laboratory, or at any rate with only a few simple and inexpensive appliances. The preparation of gases, such as hydrogen, carbonic acid, and oxygen, is very easily accomplished, but we shall here point out principally a series of experiments that are not so much known. ”

“ There, the bacteriological events of the day are discussed, interesting preparations examined, ideas sought for that may help an experimenter to solve difficulties in which he has become involved. It is to you that one comes to ask for a control experiment on a newly observed fact, for a criticism of a discovery that does not always survive the test. ”

“ His heart, which shows no signs of low temperature, is mainly in his laboratory, and he leads the way there, down a flight of stone steps to the basement, with a readiness that very clearly exhibits his latent enthusiasm.
THE LABORATORY OF DAVY AND FARADAY AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION.
Moreover, it is a laboratory eminently calculated to excite the enthusiasm of anybody, being, in fact, the most famous laboratory known to chemical science. ”

“ Now, my good friend, your living body, and my own, are laboratories, in which changes of precisely the same kind are constantly brought about; your living body, and my own, are made of an enormous quantity of separate chambers and vessels, very small, it is true, but nevertheless such as can be seen quite distinctly when they are looked for with the microscope. In these small chambers and vessels different kinds of substances are thrown together, exactly as the zinc, and acid, and blue vitriol are in the laboratory-chambers of the electric telegraph. ”

“ Under the head of "observations which lead to the theory that all matter is made up of very small separate particles" are embraced experiments on solution, diffusion, and the pressure of gases. A number of chemical experiments are given in a chapter devoted to "investigation of the composition of various kinds of matter." The final division comprises experiments in optics, designed to lead to the theory of the ether. An appendix gives many practical hints in regard to conducting the work in the laboratory. ”

“ So at about the time when the microscope had taught that the cell is the really essential structure of the living organism, the chemists had come to understand that every function of the organism is really the expression of a chemical change—that each cell is, in short, a miniature chemical laboratory. ”

“ The results of Leslie and Rumford were obtained in the laboratory; but the walls of a laboratory do not constitute the boundary of its results. Nature's hand specimens are always fair samples, and, if the experiments of the laboratory be only true, they will be ratified throughout the universe. ”

“ So I had spent two years in a school of chemistry, attending lectures, and performing analyses, qualitative and quantitative, and various other chemical experiments, which I used to think very droll and amusing, in order to fit myself for my future career—and at length, thanks to my father’s kindness, I found myself master of a laboratory which had been arranged in a manner regardless of expense, with water and gas laid on in every possible corner, and bottles, chemical stoves, and scales, &c., of a most ornamental brightness and perfection. ”

“ From these considerations it must be evident that the usefulness of the physical laboratory can not be inferred from the benefits derived from the laboratory teaching of chemistry, but must be judged by a scale of values peculiarly its own. We have called physics an exact science. ”

“ There is, indeed, little to see that would greatly interest the casual inspector, for in its outward aspects one laboratory is much like another, a seeming hodgepodge of water-tanks, glass jars of specimens, and tables for microscopes. ”

“ Probably not a man of us in the whole senior class had any idea of a chemical laboratory save as a sort of small kitchen back of a lecture-desk, like that in which an assistant and a colored servant prepared oxygen, hydrogen, and carbonic acid for the lectures of Professor Silliman. ”

“ We know that the professor's chief ambition was to create life from inert matter. All of his experiments in the laboratory were made with this object in view. All his printed works show plainly his firm belief that the thing could be accomplished, some of them going so far as to point out the processes by which he believed protoplasm, the primitive basic life substance, might be analyzed. As protoplasm is a compound of almost unlimited complexity in its physical and chemical constitution, our most skilled chemists have been unable to unravel its secrets. ”

“ One of the most important innovations in this line has been the incorporation into the regular courses of a system of laboratory work, by means of which each student is given facilities for the actual chemical and microscopic study of the proximate principles, the elements entering into the composition of the human body and its secretions, and the reactions and histological characteristics produced by various pathological conditions, which are of value in diagnosis. ”

“ The spectroscope has convinced the chemist that a chemical analysis can be effected otherwise than by mixing substances in a testing-tube, and that he can react upon the gas of a distant comet as well as upon the hydrogen in the water which flows from a stop-cock in his laboratory. Modern analysis has shown that the limits of mathematical insight, which the synthetical geometrician supposed to be absolute, may be transcended indefinitely ”

“ There was then no occasion for those delicate instruments of precision which are now found in every physical laboratory by means of which the man of science is able to investigate phenomena and determine laws that were quite unknown until a few years ago. ”

“ But if you would see the most wonderful things in this laboratory—or rather, to be quite accurate, I should say, if you would stand in the presence of the most wonderful things—you must go with Professor Ramsay to his own private laboratory, and be introduced to some little test-tubes that stand inverted in cups of mercury decorating a shelf at one end. You would never notice these tubes of your own accord were you to browse ever so long about the room. Even when your attention is called to them you still see nothing remarkable. These are ordinary test-tubes inverted over ordinary mercury. ”

“ In our laboratories, water and ternary compounds are rapidly decomposed by the battery, and we may reasonably suppose that that which is effected in our laboratories by artificial means takes place in the great laboratory of nature on a grander and more extended scale. ”

“ They've rigged up a regular laboratory—taken over one of the rec halls—and they dabble in experiments of one kind or another. Useless, of course, with the limited equipment they have, but it seems to keep some of them happy. ”

“ In the classroom the principles underlying the laboratory work are studied; additional methods also are considered. Throughout the year the student receives training in the calculations of analytical chemistry, with special attention to the errors of measurement. Particular consideration is given to the accuracy of the methods studied, in connection with the requirements of their use, and to the saving of time by proper planning of work and choice of method.
Texts: Kolthoff and Sandell, “Textbook of Quantitative Inorganic Analysis”; Giesy, “Problems in Quantitative Analysis”. ”

“ Our method has thus crystallized about the laboratory as the one essential thing; but worse, we have used the very shortcomings of the laboratory as an excuse for extending its sway. The laboratory method is the method of research in biology. It is our only way to discover unknown facts. ”

“ Every instrument of precision used in the laboratory should be a standard of its kind, the best which could be made; otherwise the work of the institution might fall short of the high character intended for it. So also with the chemicals: only the best should be tolerated. ”

“ Anyone conversant with a single branch of Natural Science is aware that experiment, as well as observation, is necessary. Who would expect discoveries in physics, or in chemistry, without laboratories and experiments? Do not botanists investigate the functions of plants by dissection, by microscopic and chemical investigation, and by experiment? ”

“ That in a chemical laboratory there is no appliance so sensitive as a diseased nerve, does not argue the inefficacy of the atomic dose, but proves the want of adaptation of the chemical apparatus to deal with the subject. ”

“ Because we have effected the putting together of such a product by purely laboratory processes—it may be, indeed, by a variety of different and dissimilar processes—it by no means follows that any one of them is identical with that actually occurring in nature. The building up of materials in the plant by the agency of light, for example, has not yet been imitated in the laboratory. ”