Quotes & Sayings About Experimental Physics

On the recommendation of my professor in experimental physics, Paul Scherrer, I took an assistantship for electron microscopy at the Biophysics Laboratory at the University of Geneva in November 1953. This laboratory was animated by Eduard Kellenberger, and it had two prototype electron microscopes requiring much attention. — Werner Arber

The University of Cambridge, in accordance with that law of its evolution, by which, while maintaining the strictest continuity between the successive phases of its history, it adapts itself with more or less promptness to the requirements of the times, has lately instituted a course of Experimental Physics. — James Clerk Maxwell

All great discoveries in experimental physics have been due to the intuition of men who made free use of models, which were for them not products of the imagination but representatives of real things.
Max Born (1953) — Victor J. Stenger

Soon I knew the craft of experimental physics was beyond me - it was the sublime quality of patience - patience in accumulating data, patience with recalcitrant equipment - which I sadly lacked. — Abdus Salam

Following the path of earlier unificationists, one of Eddington's aims was to reduce the contingencies in the description of nature, for example, by explaining the fundamental constants of physics rather than accepting them as merely experimental data. One of these constants was the fine-structure constant ... , which entered prominently in Dirac's theory and was known to be about 1/137. — Helge Kragh

Psychology, as the behaviorist views it, is a purely objective, experimental branch of natural science which needs introspection as little as do the sciences of chemistry and physics ... The position is taken here that the behavior of man and the behavior of animals must be considered in the same plane. — John B. Watson

The great problem of today is, how to subject all physical phenomena to dynamical laws. With all the experimental devices, and all the mathematical appliances of this generation, the human mind has been baffled in its attempts to construct a universal science of physics. — Joseph Lovering

Using the word much as it is used in atomic physics to characterize the relationship between experience obtained by different experimental arrangements and visualized only by mutually exclusive ideas, we may truly say that different human cultures are complimentary to each other ... each such culture represents a harmonious balance of traditional conventions by means of which latent potentialities of human life unfold themselves in a way which reveals to us new aspects of its unlimited richness and variety. — Niels Bohr

For Bohr the theory came first, then the philosophical position, the interpretation constructed to make sense of what the theory says about reality. Einstein knew that it was dangerous to build a philosophical worldview on the foundation of any scientific theory. If the theory is found wanting in the light of new experimental evidence, then the philosophical position it supports collapses with it. 'it is basic for physics that one assumes a real world existing independently from any act of perception', said Einstein. 'But this we do not know'. — Manjit Kumar

One thing they don't tell you about doing experimental physics is that sometimes you must work under adverse conditions ... like a state of sheer terror. — William Kenneth Hartmann

My final remark to young women and men going into experimental science is that they should pay little attention to the speculative physics ideas of my generation. After all, if my generation has any really good speculative ideas, we will be carrying these ideas out ourselves. — Martin L. Perl

You can't publish a paper on physics without the full experimental data and results; that should be the standard in journalism. — Julian Assange

This is often the way it is in physics - our mistake is not that we take our theories too seriously, but that we do not take them seriously enough. It is always hard to realize that these numbers and equations we play with at our desks have something to do with the real world. Even worse, there often seems to be a general agreement that certain phenomena are just not fit subjects for respectable theoretical and experimental effort. — Steven Weinberg

Experimental high energy physics research is a group effort. I have been very fortunate to have had outstanding students and colleagues who have made invaluable contributions to the research with which I have been associated. — Jerome Isaac Friedman

There are physicists, and there are string theorists. Of course the string theorists are physicists, but the string theorists in general will not attend lectures on experimental physics. They will not be terribly concerned about the results of experiments. They will talk to one another. — Sheldon Lee Glashow

We have one real candidate for changing the rules; this is string theory. In string theory the one-dimensional trajectory of a particle in spacetime is replaced by a two-dimensional orbit of a string. Such strings can be of any size, but under ordinary circumstances they are quite tiny, ... a value determined by comparing the predictions of the theory for Newton's constant and the fine structure constant to experimental values. — Edward Witten

Pragmatism , in trying to turn experimental physics into a prototype of all science and to model all spheres of intellectual life after the techniques of the laboratory, is the counterpart of modern industrialism, for which the factory is the prototype of human existence, and which models all branches of culture after production on the conveyor belt. — Max Horkheimer

Mathematical physics is in the first place physics and it could not exist without experimental investigations. — Peter Debye

I can only speak for particle physics. But it has become obvious that on the experimental side, there has been a huge evolution in the number of people who have to collaborate because of the gigantic size of the instruments used, but also because of the enormous task that is data analysis. — Peter Higgs

According to my views, aiming at quantitative investigations, that is at establishing relations between measurements of phenomena, should take first place in the experimental practice of physics. By measurement to knowledge [door meten tot weten] I should like to write as a motto above the entrance to every physics laboratory. — Heike Kamerlingh Onnes

If physics is too difficult for the physicists, the nonphysicist may wonder whether he should try at all to grasp its complexities and ambiguities. It is undeniably an effort, but probably one worth making, for the basic questions are important and the new experimental results are often fascinating. And if the layman runs into serious perplexities, he can be consoled with the thought that the points which baffle him are more than likely the ones for which the professionals have not found satisfactory answers. — Edward Condon

The universe was a disorderly mess, the only interesting bits being the organised anomalies. Hackworth had once taken his family out rowing on the pond in the park, and the ends of the yellow oars spun off compact vortices, and Fiona, who had taught herself the physics of liquids through numerous experimental beverage spills and in the bathtub, demanded an explanation for these holes in water. She leaned over the gunwale, Gwendolyn holding the sash of her dress, and felt those vortices with her hands, wanting to understand them. The rest of the pond, simply water in no particular order, was uninteresting. — Neal Stephenson

A book on the new physics, if not purely descriptive of experimental work, must essentially be mathematical. — Paul Dirac

The specific and unique presupposition for experimentation is, as remarkable as it may sound, that science become rational-mathematical, i.e., in the highest sense, not experimental. Initial positing of nature as such. Because modern "science" (physics) is mathematical (not empirical), it is necessarily experimental in — Martin Heidegger

I do not think the division of the subject into two parts - into applied mathematics and experimental physics a good one, for natural philosophy without experiment is merely mathematical exercise, while experiment without mathematics will neither sufficiently discipline the mind or sufficiently extend our knowledge in a subject like physics. — Balfour Stewart

I have no reason to believe that the human intellect is able to weave a system of physics out of its own resources without experimental labor. Whenever the attempt had been made it has resulted in an unnatural and self-contradictory mass of rubbish. — Nancy Forbes

In the 1950s, the Biophysics Laboratory at the University of Geneva was lucky enough to receive each summer for several months the visit of Jean Weigle. He was the former professor of experimental physics at the University of Geneva. — Werner Arber

Most of us who become experimental physicists do so for two reasons; we love the tools of physics because to us they have intrinsic beauty, and we dream of finding new secrets of nature as important and as exciting as those uncovered by our scientific heroes. — Luis Walter Alvarez

17th century philosophers were not in a position to understand the mind as well as we can today, since the advent of experimental methods in psychology. It shows no disrespect for the brilliance of Descartes or Kant to acknowledge that the psychology which they worked with was primitive by comparison with what is available today in the cognitive sciences, any more than it shows disrespect for the brilliance of Aristotle to acknowledge that the physics he worked with does not compare with that of Newton or Einstein. — Hilary Kornblith

There was, I think, a feeling that the best science was that done in the simplest way. In experimental work, as in mathematics, there was 'style' and a result obtained with simple equipment was more elegant than one obtained with complicated apparatus, just as a mathematical proof derived neatly was better than one involving laborious calculations. Rutherford's first disintegration experiment, and Chadwick's discovery of the neutron had a 'style' that is different from that of experiments made with giant accelerators. — John Ashworth Ratcliffe

I did a thesis in experimental nuclear physics under the direction of Samuel K. Allison. — James Cronin

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I think the same could be said for time. — Jake Vander Ark

Physics has entered a remarkable era. Ideas that were once the realm of science fiction are now entering our theoretical - and maybe even experimental - grasp. Brand-new theoretical discoveries about extra dimensions have irreversibly changed how particle physicists, astrophysicists, and cosmologists now think about the world. The sheer number and pace of discoveries tells us that we've most likely only scratched the surface of the wondrous possibilities that lie in store. Ideas have taken on a life of their own. — Lisa Randall

In the matter of physics, the first lessons should contain nothing but what is experimental and interesting to see. A pretty experiment is in itself often more valuable than twenty formulae extracted from our minds. — Albert Einstein

Experiment is the sole judge of scientific "truth." But what is the source of knowledge? Where do the laws that are to be tested come from? Experiment, itself, helps to produce these laws, in the sense that it gives us hints. But also needed is imagination to create from these hints the great generalizations - to guess at the wonderful, simple, but very strange patterns beneath them all, and then to experiment to check again whether we have made the right guess. This imagining process is so difficult that there is a division of labor in physics: there are theoretical physicists who imagine, deduce, and guess at new laws, but do not experiment; and then there are experimental physicists who experiment, imagine, deduce, and guess. — Richard Feynman

A page from a journal of modern experimental physics will be as mysterious to the uninitiated as a Tibetan mandala. Both are records of enquiries into the nature of the universe. — Fritjof Capra

Someday someone will write a pathology of experimental physics and bring to light all those swindles which subvert our reason, beguile our judgement and, what is worse, stand in the way of any practical progress. The phenomena must be freed once and for all from their grim torture chamber of empiricism, mechanism, and dogmatism; they must be brought before the jury of man's common sense. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

A common refrain among theoretical physicists is that the fields of quantum field theory are the "real" entities while the particles they represent are images like the shadows in Plato's cave. As one who did experimental particle physics for forty years before retiring in 2000, I say, "Wait a minute!" No one has ever measured a quantum field, or even a classical electric, magnetic, or gravitational field. No one has ever measured a wavicle, the term used to describe the so-called wavelike properties of a particle. You always measure localized particles. The interference patterns you observe in sending light through slits are not seen in the measurements of individual photons, just in the statistical distributions of an ensemble of many photons. To me, it is the particle that comes closest to reality. But then, I cannot prove it is real either. — Victor J. Stenger

If the aim of physical theories is to explain experimental laws, theoretical physics is not an autonomous science; it is subordinate to metaphysics. — Pierre Duhem