Customer Reviews

The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments

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In this little book, the author, a seasoned science writer, takes the reader on ten fascinating adventures into the world of science. Each adventure focuses on an important experiment that has provided humanity with a certain insight into the way in which nature works. The author's selection of these ten particular experiments appears to be a bit arbitrary, since he freely admits that others could have been included; however, in his view, these stand out the most. But that's not all: not only are the experiments described (with plenty of illustrations), but mini-biographical sketches of the scientists themselves are included, as are snapshots of the times in which they lived. The writing style is very accessible, friendly and quite engaging. This book can be enjoyed by anyone - especially those fascinated by how science works.

Scientists call an experiment beautiful or elegant if it is relatively simple and yields clear results, preferably involving a new discovery on an important topic. All of the experiments described by Johnson meet that criterion. We read brief descriptions of experiments by major scientists such as Galileo, Newton, Lavoisier, Faraday, Michelson, and Pavlov. The author, George Johnson, tells us a little bit about the personalities and the scientific-historical context of the experiments, including brief backgrounds on related work by other scientists. Though the described experiments were important, in some cases the meaning of the results was not fully understood at the time: for example, Galvani's work on animal electricity, where he demonstrated that nerve impulses could be electrically stimulated, but he did not understand that the impulse itself involved electrochemical activity. Seven of the ten chapters are on early experiments in physics. Only three topics are on biology topics, including those on William Harvey and the heart, Ivan Pavlov on conditioned responses, and Galvani on frog-leg twitches. One can always quibble over the selections. Why not make it a dozen beautiful experiments, and include Gregor Mendel on heredity, plus another one from biology or biochemistry?

Johnson's book is brief, with only 158 small pages of text before the notes and bibliography section. Unfortunately, it is too brief. The problem is that several of the experiments are not explained in sufficient detail to enable the non-expert to understand exactly how they were done, and/or why they were done the way they were done, and/or why the results demonstrated what they were claimed to demonstrate. For example, I still don't fully understand how an electromagnet or a cathode-ray tube or Michelson's interferometer work. Nor do I fully understand how Millikan used a cloud chamber to demonstrate the existence of electrons and to measure their electric charge. Johnson includes many drawings of experimental apparatuses, most of them taken from the original published sources. Unfortunately, most of the drawings are not labeled or described well enough to enable the non-expert to understand how the apparatus worked. In some cases it would have been better to create entirely new drawings, similar to those found in most modern introductory physics textbooks.

I like the basic idea of Johnson's book very much. Parts of it were interesting and informative, and I enjoyed learning some personal information about the researchers, such as the fact that Ivan Pavlov was very fond of his research dogs and treated them as humanely as possible. But the author could have done a better job of science education if he had extended the text to, say, only 199 pages, and included better illustrations, in order to make the explanations of the experiments clearer.

Here's a surprisingly compelling read, a lively blend of history and science filled with interesting true tidbits about the people involved. Author George Johnson's mission is to list and describe the top 10 most "beautiful" experiments that have explored the mysteries of science. By "beautiful," he means an experiment that has a straightforward elegance, where "confusion and ambiguity are momentarily swept aside and something new about nature leaps into view."

Each chapter covers one experiment or series of experiments. It explains the back story, the theory, the procedures the scientist used and any conclusion he or she drew. Included is a drawing or photograph of the scientist, quotes, diagrams and drawings.

The most unforgettable chapter for me concerned how Ivan Pavlov trained dogs to salivate to different stimuli. Pavlov loved his animals, and gave them names such as Buddy and Gypsy and Spot. He tried to spare his dogs pain, unlike many other animal researchers. The author describes an ornate fountain topped by a large dog that graces the grounds of Pavlov's institute still today, complete with busts of eight canines around the top, "water pouring from their mouths as they salute in salivation."

Here's the chapter list:
1. Galileo: The way things really move
2. William Harvey: Mysteries of the heart
3. Isaac Newton: What a color is
4. Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier: The farmer's daughter
5. Luigi Galvani: Animal electricity
6. Michael Faraday: Something deeply hidden
7. James Joule: How the world works
8. A.A. Michelson: Lost in space
9. Ivan Pavlov: Measuring the immeasurable
10. Robert Millikan: In the borderland
Afterword: The eleventh most beautiful experiment

The book is a delightful surprise. I bought it mostly because I enjoy the author's unpaid appearances on bloggingheads.tv, and thought I'd show my appreciation. I've enjoyed the book more than expected. While I agree with Johnson's assessments that the experiments are truly beautiful, the book captures another important notion. By reliving the "ah ha" moments revealed by these beautiful experiments, I was continuously amazed that the simple ideas we take for granted today could be hidden from so many great minds for so long. That is, while the book is primarily a testimony to the creativity of these scientists, it is also a reminder of human limitations, of how great insights can lie so close to the surface of what we think we know.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I found myself wishing I could have been a part of some of the discoveries Johnson discusses.

Another reviewer commented that the book was too short. It was a fairly short book, and it didn't go into great detail about all of the science behind each experiment, but for me that was a plus. It was short enough to read quickly (I finished it on one plane trip) and keep your interest. If you are looking to dig into the details of any of the experiments, there are plenty of more appropriate books available for that. He provided enough information so that it didn't feel superfluous, but didn't include so much that it was a chore to work through it all. I liked the fact that he included some original notes and drawings from the experimenters. I definitely suggest this to anybody with any interest in the history of science!

George Johnson chose experiments that "...were those rare moments when, using the materials at hand, a curious soul figured out a way to pose a question to the universe and persisted until it replied." Most of the experiments Johnson chose are familiar to science enthusiast but usually we haven't thought about them in years; this book is a delightful reminder. The ten experiments range from Galileo's determining that objects fall at the same speed no matter their weight to Robert Millikan's oil drop experiment. Except for William Harvey and Ivan Pavlov, the experiments are about physics. Johnson is interested in the equipment and methods as well as the results so he includes drawings that often came from the scientists' journals or published articles. The notes for each chapter provide a useful bibliography. It was great fun to revisit these interesting times in science.

I really enjoyed reading this book, but it's not obvious that I couldn't have gotten just as much information out of Wikipedia. It's a nice quick read and is definitely worth the relatively small price, but the information contained is not the result of years of investigation and research. Rather, each experiment is presented succinctly and simply.

People love listing things. It narrows our focus to proportions we can deal with, like making binoculars out of our two hands and shutting out everything outside our cupped fingers. Science writer George Johnson acknowledges in his prologue that anyone could come up with a different list, but hopes for "art in the arbitrariness" of his selection.

In this little book (less than 160 pages of text) Johnson selects and discusses The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments. His criteria: "What I was looking for were those rare moments when, using the materials at hand, a curious soul figured out a way to pose a question to the universe and persisted until it replied." He was looking for "the beauty of the design and the execution, the cleanness of the lines of thought." (p.xiii)

In each of the ten chapters Johnson very briefly outlines the life of the experimenter and the scientific lead-ups to the particular experment he is describing. In Chapter One we have Galileo rolling projectiles down inclined planes and producing a formula for acceleration. Chapter Ten gives us Robert Millikan's early-twentieth century work in defining the charge of the electron. Between these two we have William Harvey's discovery of how the body's circulatory system works; Isaac Newton's work in refracting light into its component colors; Ivan Pavlov and his salivating dogs; and five more beautiful moments in science.

This is a small book, but not a slight one. There is probably nothing new in it for the serious scientist, but for anyone else it's food for thought. Johnson's confident sketches give context for the days before particle accelerators and scanning electron microscopes turned science into big business.

Linda Bulger, 2009

I read the collection of essays in "The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments" while flying in the US, and this lightweight and interesting book makes a convenient choice for travelers who like to read about the history of science. The separate essays were concise and each focused more on an experiment than on the experimenter, although key facts about people also rounded out each piece. Regarding choice of subjects, a key concept was that the experiment should have been done by only one or a few persons rather than a large group (so the Human Genome Project could not qualify), and this choice was fine with me. I have a strong science background and I found the essays interesting and easy to read. I had not heard previously the evidence from 17th century scribbled notes that appears to show that Galileo's "rolling balls" experiment was truly performed by him and was not just a "thought experiment." The book compares favorably with Rom Harre's excellent work, "Great Scientific Experiments," another book that would be of interest to readers.

If you like those wonderful articles in the science section of The New York Times, you've undoubtedly read Mr. Johnson's writing before. Reading this book is like gaining access to a whole collection of the best of such articles.

I've always preferred experimental evidence to theorizing as a way to advance knowledge. Many things can be better understood, both in and out of scientific fields, if thoughtful experiments can be designed and properly measured.

Many science courses emphasize what the law of physics is or whatever is being studied and provide little perspective on the evidence for that law or natural function. That's too bad: In the process, those who are interested in the subject miss the chance to gain a deep appreciation for the subject.

George Johnson does an excellent job of providing pithy, clear, and interesting histories of the scientists, the problems they addressed, and the experiments they used to advance knowledge. Some of these stories were more compelling than any television drama I've ever seen.

Prior to the rebirth of inquiry in the Renaissance, Greek theories about how the world works often dominated. Those theories had to be overcome. In some cases, equally arbitrary theories were proposed by more modern scientists. The search for new knowledge almost always began with observing something in nature that didn't follow the "rule" that everyone else believed in.

The section on Galileo will quickly get your attention because Mr. Johnson dispels the notion of dropping weights from the Leaning Tower of Pisa in favor of describing how an inclined plane was used by Galileo to measure acceleration of a rolling ball. The most fascinating part of the work is how Galileo used his experimental results to derive a theory of what was really going on. Very nice!

The chapter on William Harvey nicely explains the prior view that there were two types of fluids, one in veins and a different one in arteries, rather than one quantity of blood circulating throughout the body. The evidence that this idea was silly is pretty clear, but the challenges of figuring out how the blood circulated are nicely explained here.

The chapter on Isaac Newton requires a strong stomach as Mr. Johnson describes how Newton put a probe into his own eyes to see what the effects would be. The experiments that showed how colors are contained in light are quite interesting.

My favorite chapter, however, is the one on Luigi Galvani in which he sought to demonstrate that animals use electricity to move. Galvani faced a persistent critic in Volta who conducted experiments to disprove Galvani. In the best scientific tradition, both men were right in defining different qualities of how electricity works.

I was almost as intrigued by the chapter on Pavlov that explained a fuller range of his experiments with changing reflexes. It made me want to read more about Pavlov.

The chapter on Millikan was uniquely intriguing, as Mr. Johnson explains through his re-creation of the experiment that Millikan used to measure electron movement that experiments can be almost as much of an art as a science.

In some cases, the personal details of the scientists' lives were almost as fascinating as the science such as Lady Ada Lovelace's single-minded pursuit of the much older, married Michael Faraday who outlived her by many years.