skip to main content
HPS/H 167
Experimenting with History/Historic Experiment
9 units (3-0-6)  | third term
Prerequisites: Ph 1 abc, and Ph 2 abc (may be taken concurrently).

This course uses a combination of lectures with hands-on laboratory work to bring out the methods, techniques, and knowledge that were involved in building and conducting historical experiments. We will connect our laboratory work with the debates and claims made by the original discoverers, asking such questions as how experimental facts have been connected to theories, how anomalies arise and are handled, and what sorts of conditions make historically for good data. Typical experiments might include investigations of refraction, laws of electric force, interference of polarized light, electromagnetic induction, or resonating circuits and electric waves. We will reconstruct instrumentation and experimental apparatus based on a close reading of original sources. Not offered 2022-23.

Instructor: Buchwald