About The Citizen Scientist!
The Citizen Scientist is a tool, a forum, a gallery of uncommon ingenuity. Every week we publish news, ideas, and techniques from the amateur scientist community. Our goal is to educate and empower those who enjoy testing the limits of their genius and experience against the wonders and mysteries of science and technology.
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 An Experimental Glow Discharge Tube
Reginald Smith
Recently I assembled a high-voltage glow discharge setup in my basement using a refrigerator vacuum pump, glass tube and a stopcock that I had made in college. The setup also included a tank of argon with associated piping that I soldered in place.
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Poorman's Space Program
Using the Vernier LabPro in a BalloonSat (Part 2)
L. Paul Verhage
Follow Paul at Twitter.
Last month in Part 1 we learned how to connect a sensor to the Vernier LabPro. Continuing where we left off,
1. Click File.
2. Open…
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Poorman's Space Program
A BalloonSat Update
Paul Verhage's series on near space experiments using BalloonSats is among the most important collections of amateur science articles to appear in The Citizen Scientist. Paul will eventually publish the series as a book. Meanwhile, be sure to stay tuned to Paul's latest installments in the series.
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There is No Scientific Method...
What Science is Really About
George E. Hrabovsky
MAST
We all know what science is, right? A scientist sits down and makes an observation, then formulates a hypothesis to explain the data gathered from the observation, then predicts some outcome using the hypothesis as a model, and then performs an experiment to verify the prediction, thus arriving at some scientific truth.
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The Amateur Scientist's Guide to Publishing and Peer Review
Reginald Smith
At the 2005 Citizen's Science Conference in Las Vegas, I had the pleasure of talking with many amateur scientists, including the godfathers, Shawn Carlson, the Director of the Society for Amateur Scientists (SAS) and Forrest Mims, atmospheric researcher extraordinaire and world famous through his Radio Shack electronics how-to books.
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Auto-Correlation of Rectified Signal vs DEMON Spectral Analysis
Ronald Larham
1. Introduction
Jim Hannon has shown that the speed of a domino wave can be measured using the auto-correlation of a rectified sound recording of the noise made by the collapse of a domino array (1). In (2) and (3) I have shown how to do the same thing using Fourier analysis of the rectified sound recording (DEMON analysis) of the array collapse.
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This Week at Hilton Pond
Bill Hilton Jr.
Executive Director
Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History
York, South Carolina 29745 USA
19th Annual York/Rock Hill, South Carolina, Christmas Bird Count (22-28 December 2009)
When the end-of-year holiday season arrives, we're always involved in compiling results of the York/Rock Hill Christmas Bird Count, so that's the topic of the 22-28 December 2009 installment of "This Week at Hilton Pond."
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