MOTION MOUNTAIN

observations and their collection 293
Ref. 265, Ref. 266
Ref. 267
Ref. 268
Physics is an experimental science; it rests on the collection of observations. To realize
this task effectively, all sorts of instruments, i.e., tools that facilitate observations, have
been developed and built. Microscopes, telescopes, oscilloscopes, as well as thermometers,
hygrometers, manometers, pyrometers, spectrometers amongst others are familiar
examples. The precision of many of these tools is being continuously improved even
today; their production is a sizeable part of modern industrial activity, examples being
electrical measuring apparatus and diagnostic tools for medicine, chemistry and biology.
Instruments can be as small as a tip of a few tungsten atoms to produce an electron beam
of a few volts, and as large as27 km in circumference, producing an electron beam with
more than100 GV effective accelerating voltage. Instruments have been built that containandmeasurethecoldestknownmatterintheuniverse.
Other instruments can measure
length variations of far less than a proton diameter over kilometre long distances.
Instruments have been put deep inside the Earth, on the Moon, on several planets, and
have been sent outside the solar system.
In this walk, instruments are not described in detail; many good textbooks on this
topic are available. Many observations collected by instruments are not mentioned in our
adventure.The most important measurement results in physics are recorded in standard
publications, such as the Landolt–Börnstein series and the physics journals. (Appendix
E gives a general overview of information sources.)
Will there be significant new future observations in the domain of the fundamentals
ofmotion? At present,in this specific domain,even though the number of physicists
and publications is at anall-time high,thenumber ofnewexperimentaldiscoveries has
been steadily diminishing for many years and is now fairly small.The sophistication and
investment necessary to obtain new results has become extremely high. In many cases,
measuring instruments have reached the limits of technology, of budgets or even those
of nature. The number of new experiments that produce results showing no deviation
from theoretical predictions is increasing steadily. The number of historical papers that
try to enliven dull or stalled fields of enquiry are increasing. Claims of new effects and
discoveries which turn out to be false, due to measurement errors, self-deceit or even
fraud have become so frequent that scepticism to new results has become a common
response.
Most importantly, no difference between observations and the theory of motion are
known, as we will discover in the next two volumes. Although in many domains of science,
including physics, discoveries are still expected, new observations on the fundamentalsofmotionareonlyaremotepossibility.
Inshort,thetaskofcollectingobservations on the foundations of motion (though not
on other topics of physics) seems to becomplete. Indeed, the vast majority of observations
described in this adventure were obtained before the end of the twentieth century. We
are not too early with our walk.
“Measurewhatismeasurable;make measurable
whatisnot.
Wronglyattributed toGalileo.”
Motion Mountain – The Adventure of Physics copyright © Christoph Schiller June 1990–November 2015 free pdf file available at www.motionmountain.net