Contrary to some popular belief, science doesn’t often attempt to claim hard-and-fast truths, immovable facts, but instead uses the best possible evidence to draw conclusions and then stimulate the next stage of exploration. The Scientific Method can be represented by Ouroboros, the ancient symbol of a snake or dragon eating it’s own tail, which can mean infinity, wholeness, a never-ending cycle of growth and destruction.
Similarly, The Scientific Method is cyclical: Hypothesis -> Test -> Re/Evaluate the hypothesis, accept, reject or modify -> Test the new hypothesis -> And on and on
With this in mind, I participated in a group activity to devise and carry out an experiment. Each member of the group had brought a personal item to share. I chose a brooch, which I got from a car boot sale in Otley near Leeds sometime last spring. The elderly woman who I bought it from was running a costume jewellery stall in order to fund an animal rescue centre. She told me that her mother and grandmother had worked in the houses of wealthy people, and whenever the mistress broke an item of jewellery the house girls would collect up the beads and make new items from them for themselves. She claimed that this brooch was made from Irish pebbles, but later called them Scottish pebbles. I doubt I’ll ever know the true origin but I liked the Celtic design and how the polished stones retained their natural form, and the fact that it came with a story.
The other items that were shared in my group were polystyrene balls, a Barcelona football club cereal bowl (which belonged to the husband of the group member and which she was trying to break to get it out of her house) and a well-used art sponge.
We first had an idea to fill the bowl with water and then test which item sunk fastest. However, we were able to know the answer to this without testing (that the solid brooch would sink before the porous sponge or the polystyrene ball). So we modified the idea to test which item would displace the most water, if the bowl was filled right to the brim. This was a more interesting test because we knew the brooch would sink, but it was very small compared to the other items, so it may only displace a small amount of water. We guessed that the sponge would sink eventually and displace some of the water, but it would also absorb some water so the exact amount of displacement was harder to estimate. We also knew that the polystyrene ball would float, but as it wouldn’t sit completely on top of the water (an amount of it would be below the surface level) we thought that it should displace some water but again the exact amount was difficult to predict.
One of the first things we found was that the surface we were working on wasn’t exactly level, despite appearing to be to the human eye. This was learned though observing the slanted water level. This made it more difficult to fill the bowl to the brim, but each time before dropping an item into the water we did see the water line bulge without breaking the water tension.
We placed the bowl on sheets of paper, so the paper would record the area of water that touched it. We also used a water bottle to rest out wrist on before dropping the item, in an attempt to drop each item from an equal height.
The findings:
- Surprisingly, the polystryrene ball did not displace any water at all. This probably means we could have fit more water into the bowl, but this would probably have to be done under more controlled conditions
- The sponge created a great splash, is this different to displacement? I suppose so, since the water has moved by force, not by the volume of the sponge. To rectify this if we repeated the experiment, we might have to construct an apparatus that very gently placed the items onto/into the water to avoid a splash but without displacing any water itself (or displacing the same amount each time so we could adjust the results)
- We drew around the pattern that the water made on the paper, and realised we had created some SciArt unintentionally! However, we felt the art could be improved by using a colour dye in the water. This is something I will try for myself at home.
Conclusion: Obviously this experiment was lacking in scientific rigor, as we had not fully addressed all of the variables that would affect the outcome. What it did show us was how learning comes from doing – we modified our ideas and realised what would be needed to carry out this experiment in a more scientific way as we were doing it (e.g. to have a totally flat surface, to have a reliable way of filling the bowl to the brim without it spilling over etc). These were obstacles that we might not have foreseen without actually testing the hypothesis and the experiment. We also saw how experiments can produce visual results that can be SciArt, and this has given me a tangible example to think on when planning how my own SciArt project may lead to an aesthetic outcome.
Ouroboros illustration reference:
Shreeve, L. (2014) The art & words of Lief system. [Online] Available at: http://www.liefsystem.tumblr.com/ [Accessed: 04 November 2016]
Experiment photographs taken from a film shot by Yaman Jomaa