Hazel, we're asking the learners on the science experiment course to keep a study journal.
And I thought I'd ask you - as dean of science -
why taking detailed written notes is good scientific practice.
Well, the thing is it's just like the rest of life. It's really obvious that day what
those measurements or observations or whatever, what they were
for, what you've achieved, what happened.
Next day, next week, next month, certainly next year, you have long since forgotten.
And that's really why.
Just so that you understand how the thought processes is and everything else worked out.
What the things were that were affecting the experiment that day.
So what kind of things do scientists write down then? What have you got in your notebooks?
Oh, in my notebooks. So this is a bit tatty.
Well you know, these are real field notebooks. They've got wet, they've been thrown in the
mud and everything else, and they're held together with duct tape.
Do you know, this is the most important piece of field equipment, is the roll of duct tape.
So the sorts of things - oops - that we would note in the book.
Well, we've got phone numbers of local people that are helping us for example.
Here I've got the name of a station, it's one of the places I make my measurements.
And I've explained how to get there.
By the can on the right of the road, two kilometres from the turning
of the lake. That sort of thing.
So with that kind of information in it, that means that you could pass this notebook on
- say to one of your students - so they've got the local
contacts and the locations to go to.
Exactly. So for field science, there's no point keeping your data hidden away in the
notebook just for your own use.
In some cases, other people want to go back to that precise location.
Of course these days you can use GPS, but
there are other things that you need to note down.
Say, for example, you might be able to precisely locate a point using GPS,
but you would need to know whether the measurement that you were
making was up on the top of a boulder, or the bottom,
or just around, or whatever it is. So you would have pictures, and you would
have a detailed description. So that anybody could
then come along and precisely make that same measurement.
So apart from those kinds of notes, I'm guessing most of your notebooks are full of numbers.
They are. They are very nerdy looking notebooks.
So these are the sorts of measurements I would make.
I'd say what date it was. I'd say what the
measurements were, and here are the numbers, and some other notes about them.
And yes it's just numbers, numbers, numbers.
But every now and then, I've got comments such as
instruments fell over, or instrument knocked,
or something like that. Because that's what
happened, and that could affect the numbers that you make.
And also it helps you to remember it. Because if it's just a string of numbers,
you come back next week, next year, it's just a string of numbers.
But if you've said, this was where Bill fell over,
you think 'Oh yeah, I remember that'.
And you can remember what happened. You remember whether it was raining or whatever.
Now it's interesting because we're both volcanologists. We both work on volcanoes. And this just
shows how personal every scientist's notebooks are.
Because yours are full of numbers, and mine are full of pictures.
Wow. I must say, yours is very pretty.
Well I think it just depends on the type of research that you're doing. This is essentially
a log through layers of rock.
I'm quite fussy because
I always have a line down one side of my notebooks. And that's where I record
the sample that I've taken, next to the layer that I've taken it from.
So I'm guessing that everybody's notebooks are going to be different according to the type of
scientific data that you want to record.
well, that's absolutely right, and you know, the thing is that
You can't say - that's right and that's wrong or the other way around. It depends.
So long as it does the job, so long as this reminds you
of- in this case-- where you collected the samples and what the strata looked like-- what types of things you were seeing--
that's doing its job.
And of course, you could hand that over to anybody else. They could go to that locality,
and they would be able to identify where to go and collect those same rocks.
So the job is to remind you and to be able to help somebody else.
And I guess nowadays with digital photographs, there's a tendency to people to think,
well I'm not going to write it all down in this terribly painstaking way. I'm just going to take a photograph.
But photos just don't work as well, do they?
Actually it sounds really old fashioned, but no, I don't think they do work as well.
I don't think it's a case of either or, I think you can use both. But
there's nothing like a field notebook actually.
Some people record things on their phone, and of course you can write onto your phone as well and do all that at the same time.
And then you can email it or whatever to lots and lots of people. But there's something about
writing it chronologically through the notebook
like this, that does help it somehow to keep
it into your mind in a better way.
Yeah. And it's interesting because I've got one as well, that I did for my followup experiments.
And I've written down the number of the experiments--
and as you say-- the date and time, and of various conditions and things.
But I've got one here that says failed.
But that's equally as important, isn't it Absolutely it is.
A failed experiment is not a failure.
So what you were expecting didn't
happen, but that's just as important.
And then really, really importantly, you never cross out anything in a notebook, do you?
You underline it, or you say not to use or something
in your final analysis. But you've written it in the
notebook, and it must stay in the notebook. That's a perfectly valid note, whether or
not the data turn out to be valid.
Now our books are pretty complicated and pretty detailed. What we're asking the learners to
do is a very simple study journal.
But
that's of equal value, isn't it? Absolutely.
It's very important to note - as we've said - the time and the date, and so
on, where you are, whatever.
Environmental conditions. So
if you were outside doing an experiment for example -
and it was raining - you might get different results from if it was sunny.
All sorts of things can affect an experiment. And sometimes you don't even know what those
are until you happen to have noted them all down.
Then you can perhaps find variations. And you can say, Oh well
actually look, the conditions here were different from this other time.
And the two times that you've made those experiments might have been years apart depending on what you're doing.
And you wouldn't remember that it was bright and sunny or raining or whatever
unless you'd written it down.
You might even note down at the end of the experiment, don't do this next time. Try changing
so and so or something.
Yes. And if you've written it down, you're more likely to remember it.
The other thing, of course, is it might have been a failed experiment in terms
of what you were trying to do at the time.
But you've still got those measurements. You've still got those results.
And it might be that another time, what you were actually looking for was whatever happened
this time. That you thought was a failure one time,
might not actually turn out to be. Some of the
fantastic results that have been observed through the history of science, have actually
been apparent fail--
People's mistakes?
--People's mistakes, yes. I accidentally mixed this with that, and 'Oh look what I got'.
What we're asking the learners to do now - in keeping a study journal - could be the start
of something big going forward into the future.
Beginning of their scientific careers.
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