Laws of Physics: Unchanged!

[forsyth]

At least we know if the laws of physics were to suddenly change one day, we'd notice, because of the innumerable high school and college science classes replicating basic experiments every day.

Comments

[leticia.livejournal.com]

Not necessarily! When I was in college physics, we had bad equipment that tended to give me really weird results, so I just start calculating the values I 'should' get and putting them in.

Now, how do I know it was REALLY the equipment, not a previously undiscovered amendment to the laws of physics?

[forsythferret.livejournal.com]

That's where the millions of samples come in. If you have enough variables, almost everything becomes a normal distribution (the bell curve one), so therefore the aggregate numbers should be distributed around the correct numbers.

Of course, that's assuming the professors and TAs are keeping actual track of the data, or even reading the lab reports, which may be questionable.

Also, I hear you on the bad lab equipment, our hydraulics stuff was prone to getting bubbles in the line to the manometer to read the pressure, and if that happens, then your data is junk!