Experimental techniques.

I studied in physics in York. The three guys in charge of the demonstration experiments were Matt, Pete and Ian. They were all quite accustomed to students and professors who couldn't get things to work, but were always keen to remind you how stupid you were when you appeared with a newly broken piece of apparatus. In their office they had a framed cartoon which summed up their suffering. I made a quick reproduction of this cartoon, which referred to the famous tale of Galileo and his cannon balls.



The cause of my new-found solidarity with lab technicians was an encore of the Stern-Gerlach experiment which was held today. Prof. Dr. X decided to include the experiment in his lecture, and was determined to run the experiment himself, despite the fact that there were four perfectly qualified people standing around ready to press the necessary buttons. The experiment worked, but not as well as it could have. An hour of preparation was almost screwed up because he lacked the coordination to press a key and flick a switch together. Of course he then had several suggestions for how the experiment could be improved. It's not that he's wrong: of course you could improve the experiment. It's just the pomposity of assuming that he's the first person to think of these things.