Research in Small Groups

MAR 01, 1985

Small‐scale research plays a vital role in advancing physics, in training physicists and in generating new technologies, but we will need a new perspective to judge its needs alongside those for large facilities.

DOI: 10.1063/1.2814494

Daniel Kleppner

In Munich’s Deutsches Museum one can come upon an Italian Renaissance study, meticulously recreated and handsomely furnished save for one intrusion: A plank, one end propped on a trestle, the other resting on the floor. With such a crude apparatus and using his pulse to clock how long a brass ball takes to roll various distances, Galileo first explored the nature of uniformly accelerated motion. With the aid of these measurements he discovered the basics of dynamics; in so doing he also established a tradition for experimental research that has animated physics ever since.

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References

1. Physics Survey, to be published by NAS‐NRC.
2. Revitalizing Laboratory Instrumentation, Office of Physical Sciences, NRC, National Academy P., Washington, D.C. (1982).
3. National Patterns of Science and Technology Resources, 1984, NSF 84–311, 1984.
The estimate of $330 million for 1983 is based on the reported value of $306 million for Federally funded R & D expenditures in physics at universities and colleges in 1982.

More about the authors

Daniel Kleppner, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.