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Favorite Experiments?

strathmeyer said:
I'm sorry, Jeff, but you can't discount and experiment you don't like by refusing to call it an experiment. I can't believe you made me go look this up in a textbook. Shame on you.
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Shame on me? An experimenter manipulates an independent variable to see if there is an effect on a dependent variable. Milgram (1963) had obedience as a dependent variable but no independent variable. All subjects were treated the same and there was no control group or condition.
"after his initial demonstration, Milgram (1974) tried about 20 variations..." (p.659) Weiten (2007) Essentials of Psychology, 7th ed.
 
I nominate

1) Millikan's Oil Drop experiment, which proved conclusively the quantization of electricity, and the charge of its carriers.

2) Joseph John Thomson’s experiment to determine the ratio of charge to mass of those same carriers.

19'th century equipment that any 16 year old can operate (and probably make) used to determine the mass of a single electron.

When I realized that, it was my first big "WOW" moment for the power of the scientific method.
 
Jeff Corey said:
Shame on me? An experimenter manipulates an independent variable to see if there is an effect on a dependent variable. Milgram (1963) had obedience as a dependent variable but no independent variable. All subjects were treated the same and there was no control group or condition.
"after his initial demonstration, Milgram (1974) tried about 20 variations..." (p.659) Weiten (2007) Essentials of Psychology, 7th ed.
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One could take the "20 variations" as reported in his book as different levels of a manipulated IV. Group size was varied. Salience of the experimenter was varied. Salience of the learner/victim was varied. Obedience varied positively with salience of experimenter, negatively with salience of learner/victim.

Now, the Stanford Prison Experiment, there is no question that there was no manipulated IV there, no matter how the study is framed.
 
Mercutio said:
One could take the "20 variations" as reported in his book as different levels of a manipulated IV. Group size was varied. Salience of the experimenter was varied. Salience of the learner/victim was varied. Obedience varied positively with salience of experimenter, negatively with salience of learner/victim.

Now, the Stanford Prison Experiment, there is no question that there was no manipulated IV there, no matter how the study is framed.
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True. But all were referring to the original study(1963). Not an experiment, any more than Phil Zimbardo's.
And some of the later ones compared what they got at Yale with a storefront in Bridgeport. Still not an experiment, no random assignment. And another, comparing males and females. No independent variable there. A correlational study. Group size and salience I don't recall. But he did study with Sol Asche, who shouldda taught him better.
 
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Jeff Corey said:
True. But all were referring to the original study(1963). Not an experiment, any more than Phil Zimbardo's.
And some of the later ones compared what they got at Yale with a storefront in Bridgeport. Still not an experiment, no random assignment. And another, comparing males and females. No independent variable there. A correlational study. Group size and salience I don't recall. But he did study with Sol Asche, who shouldda taught him better.
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I have seen the film enough times to practically have it memorized (and you should hear my "learner" imitation--a spot-on "I told you I have a heart condition; my heart's starting to bother me now! Let me out! let me out! let me out!")

The victim was A) in another, sound-proofed room, where he only pounded on the wall at one level, then quit responding at another, B) in another room but clearly audible, C) in the same room, or D) seated next to the Teacher, who had to force the learner's hand onto a shock plate if he refused to put his hand there himself.

The Experimenter was A) present in the room, B) present for the instructions, leaving afterward, C) Not present at all, the instructions being given by tape recorder, and D) another condition I forget.

In the group situation, group size varied, as did the part played by the subject (from being the one to deliver the shock, to playing a more minor role).
 
joobz said:
Instead of posting famous experiments that changed the world, I'd like to offer up one of my favorite highschool physics experiments.

We measured the speed of light by sending a laser through a beam splitter and having one beam immediately hit a detector connected to an oscilloscope. We dialed in the oscilloscope so that the waveform was steady on the screen. We then sent the split beam down the hall and bounced it back off a mirror and hit another detector. We then saw the exact same waveform, but with a time shift. This shift equaled the time it took to travel and a simple length calculation allowed us to compute the speed of light in air to 3 significant digits. we even changed the pathlength and saw the linear change in the time shift.

To this day, the simplicity of the experiment and calculation floored me. Impossible to imagine values (the speed of light) dissolved into something as simple as calculating Pi. I loved that experiment.
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That does sound like an interesting experiment, I was not as lucky in my science classes. Once they tried to make a 'fire tornado' but it didn't work for them.
 
Mercutio said:
I have seen the film enough times to practically have it memorized (and you should hear my "learner" imitation--a spot-on "I told you I have a heart condition; my heart's starting to bother me now! Let me out! let me out! let me out!")

The victim was A) in another, sound-proofed room, where he only pounded on the wall at one level, then quit responding at another, B) in another room but clearly audible, C) in the same room, or D) seated next to the Teacher, who had to force the learner's hand onto a shock plate if he refused to put his hand there himself.

The Experimenter was A) present in the room, B) present for the instructions, leaving afterward, C) Not present at all, the instructions being given by tape recorder, and D) another condition I forget.

In the group situation, group size varied, as did the part played by the subject (from being the one to deliver the shock, to playing a more minor role).
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Merc, that was not the original study,the group situation wasn't done until later.
In the original publication, no rule#8 experiment. It was what a friend of mine used to call an "Oh,wow". You know, that Candid Camera sort of crap social psychologists did back then. I used to stick a needle through my arm. "Oh wow".
The reason I persist at this is because of the naiviete of some here who think this piece of crap is any more than street theater hauled into a laboratory.
 
Agreed--never said it was the original; my point was that we could take the series as an experiment. My guess is that most people's experience with the study is from the film, which does detail the various conditions.
 
Not mentioned yet, Eratosthenes calculation of the circumference of the Earth. Not bad for 200 BC-ish.

Walt
 
Cavendish's experiment 1797 in which he measured the weight of the earth from his own living room...

It was a study in which he peered through a telescope into an ajoining room to measure the deflection of due to gravity of two small spheres suspended next to two larger ones.....

and after exacting measurements taking over 1 year to complete he announced a weight of 6 billion trillion metric tons -

which two hundred years later we've only improved upon to 5.9725 billion trillion tons.

For the insight, the patience, the ingenuity of measuring the weight of the world without leaving your house, and the accuracy even 2 centuries later, Cavendish gets my vote :)

*a detailed account of this an other fascinating experiments through the ages in Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything*
 
Dr Adequate said:
Didn't he fudge his figures?
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Sure; it's still an elegant experiment, though.

I should probably have mentioned the DCQE and Aspect, but they are complicated, so I think that they might not be entirely elegant. I stayed away from Millikan for that reason, too.
 
Apparently so did Mendel, according to Fisher's 1936 analysis of his data. This led to the frequent excuse, "Mendel's gardener's dog ate my data." And to the invention of the totally blind experiment.
 
Jeff Corey said:
Apparently so did Mendel, according to Fisher's 1936 analysis of his data. This led to the frequent excuse, "Mendel's gardener's dog ate my data." And to the invention of the totally blind experiment.
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It's been shown, by Shermer IIRC, that Mendel's fudging could have been quite unconscious.
 
ETA: Merc has already covered this. Sorry!

ETA2: How could I forget! Pavlov and his Dog.
 
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I also would have to go with a physics experiment we did in school. The experiment demonstrates that it is not the absolute frequency of light reflecting off an object that determines the color we see. It is instead the relative difference between that light and the light reflecting off other objects in our field of view.

The experiment is done as follows.

Equipment: Dark room. Photometer. Red, Green, Blue spotlights with variable intensities. Various 1 foot square colored pieces of wood,cardboard or paper.

Start with a sinlge yellow square on a black wall and shine the 3 color lights onto it, each set to the same intensity. Use the photometer to measure the reflected light from the yellow square. It will match the expected value for yellow light, and the square will appear yellow.

Now, replace the yellow square with an orange square. With the lights still set to equal intensities, measure the reflected light from the orange square.

Replace the orange square with the original yellow square. Next, adjust the variable lights until the photometer measures the same wavelength as was reflected off the orange square. You will then observe that the yellow square appears orange.

The final step is to leave the lights as they are and surround the yellow square (which now appears orange) with a variety of colored squares. When you do that, all the squares will appear as their normal color under white light.

The photometer, when measuring the light reflecting off the yellow square will still show the same value that it did when it appeared orange, but it will no longer look orange.

The End.
 
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