Rebutting radical scientific skepticism

I'm surprised nobody has posted about finding the speed of light with a chocolate bar and a microwave, because I find that absolutely mindblowing.

The basic experiment is to take the turntable out of the microwave and put in the chocolate, nuke it for a couple of seconds until part of the chocolate starts melting and then measure the distance between the melting patches. If you have a standard microwave, you'll be on a frequency of 2.45 GHz (you can check this online or in the manual). Multiply the distance between the spots by 2,450,000,000 (or whatever the frequency is) and then by 2 and you will end up with c, to within whatever accuracy you measured the melting spots.

I guess if you were really skeptical you could say that you have no reason to believe that v = f * lambda, or that the manufacturers of microwaves or rulers were colluding to decieve you, but I think this is around the point where you can start claming the evidence of your eyes is decieving you and so on - too skeptical to add anything useful to the discussion.

I spent quite a lot of time many years ago doing my own independent checks on astronomy.

I started down this line after an argument with a friend who believed in astrology. It became apparent that they were talking about planets being in different constellations to the ones I'd seen them in. I forget the details of their particular brand of astrology, but they had an algorithm for calculating a sort-of 'logical' position of the planets in the 12 zodiacal signs, and this algorithm did not match observation, even given that the zodiacal signs do not line up neatly with modern constellations. They were scornful that I was unable to tell them where, say, Venus would be in 12 years time, or where it was when I was born.

So challenged, I set to.

The scientific algorithms for doing this are not entirely trivial. I got hold of a copy of Jean Meeus' Astronomical Algorithms, and it took me quite a lot of work to understand them, and then even longer to implement them so I could answer that sort of question. They are hopelessly and messily empirical (which I take as a good sign) - there is a daunting number of coefficients. Eventually I got it working, and could match observation to prediction of planetary positions to my satisfaction - when I looked at them, the planets were where my calculations said they should be, more or less.

It's hard with amateur equipment to measure accurate locations in the sky (e.g. how high and in which direction is a particular star at a particular time), but relative ones are much easier (e.g. how close is Venus to a particular star at a particular time). The gold standard for this sort of stuff is occultations - where you predict that a planet will occult (pass in front of) a star. There weren't any of those happening around the time I was doing it, but I was able to verify the calculations for other occultations that people had observed (and photographed) at the date and times I had calculated.

These days, software to calculate this stuff - and to visualise it, which I never managed - is widely available. There are many smartphone apps that will show you these calculations overlaid on to the sky when you hold your phone up to it. (Although IME their absolute accuracy isn't brilliant, which I think is due to the orientation sensors being not that good.) This makes checking these sorts of predictions very, very easy. Although of course you can't check that there isn't, say, a team of astronomers making observations and regularly adjusting the data that gets to your phone.

I was also able to independently replicate enough of Fred Espenak's NASA eclipse calculations to completely convince me he was right. (After I found several bugs in my own code.) Perhaps the most spectacular verification was replicating the calculations for the solar eclipse of 11 August 1999. I was also able to travel to the path of totality in France, and it turned up slap on time and in place. This was amazing, and I strongly urge anyone reading this to make the effort to travel to the path of totality of any eclipse they can.

Until I'd played around with these calculations, I hadn't appreciated just how spectacularly accurate they have to be. You only need a teeny-tiny error in the locations of the Sun/Moon/Earth system for the shadow cast by the moon on the Earth to be in a very different place.

I also replicated the calculations for the transit of Venus in 2004. I was able to observe it, and it took place exactly as predicted so far as I was able to measure - to within, say, 10 seconds or so. (I didn't replicate the calculations for the transit in 2012 - no time and I'd forgotten about how my ghastly mess of code worked - and I wasn't able to observe it either, since it was cloudy where I was at the time.)

More recently, you can calculate Iridium flares and ISS transits. Again, you have to be extremely accurate in calculations to be able to predict where they will occur, and they turn up as promised (except when it's cloudy). And again, there are plenty of websites and apps that will do the calculations for you. With a pair of high-magnification binoculars you can even see that the ISS isn't round.

All this isn't complete and perfect verification. But it's pretty good Bayesian evidence in the direction that all that stuff about orbits and satellites is true.

My father replicated the Cavendish experiment in our basement.

Some genetics can be easily verfied. Some phenotypes are easy to spot: http://www.scienceprofonline.com/genetics/ten-human-genetic-traits-simple-inheritance.html Just sample a few of these and compare with parent-children pairs. This is much easier than trying Mendels pea experiments.

Can you measure the consistency of the velocity of light on your own?

Various ways to measure the speed of light. Many require few modern implements. How to measure constancy of the speed of light -- the original experiment, does not require any complicated or mysterious equipment, only careful design.

Is there an easily visible consequence of special relativity that you can see without specialized equipment?

Off the top of my head, the time dilation effect on muons, which can be seen with a cloud chamber. Less directly, most magnetic fields result from observing electric fields in a moving frame.

Is there an easily visible consequence of special relativity that you can see without specialized equipment?

Wasn't one verification of Einstein's theories the bending of starlight as observed in a solar eclipse?

....

Naturally, La Wik has an article on this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relativity#Deflection_of_light_by_the_Sun

Sounds like the light bending requires multiple simultaneously sightings around the world, while the perihelion precession of Mercury could be more easily verified with some diligence and a telescope.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relativity#Deflection_of_light_by_the_Sun

Oh, you wanted Special Relativity.

La Wik saves the day again! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_special_relativity

Mathematics: all the mathematics I know, I learned not merely by reading theorems, but by following through or working out their proofs. I believe that is how people who use mathematics (as opposed to merely struggling through an exam and then forgetting it all and never using it again) generally learn it.

As a general rule, the easiest way to verify a scientific discovery is to find out how the original discoverer did it and replicate their experiment. There are sometimes easier ways, and occasionally the discoverers used some expensive equipment... but mostly the requirement is some math and elbow grease/patience. Another advantage of replicating the original discovery is that you don't accidentally use unverified equipment or discoveries (ie equipment dependent on laws that were unknown at the time).

It is odd that you highlight the Bedford Level Experiment, rather than other methods that have been used for thousands of years. The new experiment has the advantage that it can be performed by a single person in a single afternoon. It has the disadvantage that it shows that the Earth is flat.

Eratosthenes measured the north-south curvature of the Earth by making observations separated by hundreds of miles. It could be applied east-west with good clocks, or, as you suggest, with the simultaneity of telephones. Since I'd have to travel hundreds of miles anyway to reach the straight canal in Bedford, it has little advantage over Eratosthenes's method. I suppose you could make a similar observation by climbing a mast on a ship the right distance from shore, but the ocean waves add noise not present on the canal. It does have the advantage of requiring less geometry. Since the Bedford experiment used 1/100 the distance, it required 100x the accuracy of angular measurement. This is easy to overlook, since the measurement is not phrased that way, but I think this is why it encounters new sources of error.

Older experiments are generally easier. While everything is easier to measure today, the main advance is in measuring time.

Is there an easily visible consequence of special relativity that you can see without specialized equipment?

To a point, classical electromagnetism. You can treat the B field as the difference due to special relativity between the E field of a stationary arrangement of particles and the E field of that arrangement in motion. Also when you change the reference frame you view an arrangement of moving charges in, you see the force they feel as having come from different combinations of electric and magnetic fields but always adding up to the same thing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_electromagnetism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_electromagnetism_and_special_relativity

Is there an easily visible consequence of special relativity that you can see without specialized equipment?

A working GPS receiver.

In general, things like a smartphone "verify" a great deal of modern science.

Just direct observation, by the way, gives you little. Yes, you can observe discontinuous spectra of fluorescent lights. So what? This does not prove quantum mechanics in any way, this is merely consistent with quantum mechanics, just as it is consistent with a large variety of other explanations.

How much can you directly demonstrate in biology or the social sciences?

In biology, it really depends on what do you want demonstrate. For some things a frog and a scalpel will be sufficient :-/ Or maybe just a scalpel X-D

Is there an easily visible consequence of special relativity that you can see without specialized equipment?

If you're willing to accept quantum mechanics/nuclear physics, you can calculate that Gold would be white instead of yellow if it weren't for relativistic effects.

Great post!

Evolution of antibiotic resistance is indeed fairly easy, but how about evolving something visibly different? Evolution of simple multicellularity from a unicellular ancestor is easier than you might think: http://www.snowflakeyeastlab.com/

If we can solve the earth-orbits-the-sun problem, we don't need to measure the parallax of stars accurately to show that they're really far away, which seems like an important scientific truth.

Suppose you distrusted everything you had ever read about science. How much of modern scientific knowledge could you verify for yourself, using only your own senses and the sort of equipment you could easily obtain? How about if you accept third-party evidence when many thousands of people can easily check the facts?

Interestingly enough, this was the original idea behind science. Hence, the motto of the royal society nullius in verba, or in English "Take no one's word for it".

This is a very interesting game. At a meta-level though, my belief in a lot of science is grounded in its usefulness. If people who believe in Newtonian physics can make me float in the air in a gigantic metal tube hurtling at 500 miles/hr while I sip my Coke, I suspect their belief is well-justified.

About biology: Feynman experimented on ants learning the shortest way to sugar (if I remember it right - 'Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!').

There are commercial products based on pheromones used to call male Colorado beetles away from potato plantations (and tales of horror about people not reading the instructions beforehand.) Also, the variability of the black spots on its pronotum is a cool illustration of well-defined phens.

There are detectors that allow you to hear bats (I don't know how much they cost.)

There are cheap ferns (Carolina Biological Supplies, for example) for high school teaching about life cycles, sexual reproduction etc., including induced mutagenesis. They also sell the growing medium.

There are lichens to measure growth rates of, and there is at least one manual on growing mosses indoor, and you can experiment with adding nutrients to the pots and see for yourself that some species don't tolerate excess organic etc.

There are heaps of things to observe. You just have to know just what you are looking for.

You want books for middle school science teachers.

EDIT: not saying that even most books in this category or what you want, but that many of the books you want are in this category.

For testing Quantum Mechanics a relatively easy thing to test is the Hall Effect.

This book seems like it could be relevant, but I haven't read it:

http://www.amazon.com/Exploring-Quantum-Physics-through-Projects/dp/1118140664/

If you allow indirect evidence, then the rotation of the earth around the sun follows from the seasons which are easy to observe. Or rather from the earthes tilt. Given that you confirmed a) constant (almost) distance to the sun, b) conservation of angular momentum (via observation of spinning tops), c) changing angle of midday sunlight thru the year the only remaining conclusion is that the earth circles the sun.

Almost. you have to exclude that precession of the eath is causing the changing tilt. You'd have to estimate the amount of precession (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precession#Classical_.28Newtonian.29) which should be possible given some rough estimates of the mass of the earth.

I have been attempting to do this with biology and medicine, seriously for about 5 years now. Not by actually repeating experiments, but in trying to understand the original evidence, and see if I agree that it was interpreted correctly. Of course this is nearly impossible as biology is too broad and complex for one person to understand all of the details.

It's a confusing mess, but I think I am still learning a lot. Even if I come to agree with most of the mainstream ideas, I'd like to think I'd then understand them more deeply, in a way that is more functionally useful.

For much of medicine, there really isn't any biological basis or evidence to review. Much of modern medicine involves covering up symptoms with drugs proven to do this, without understanding the underlying cause of the symptom.