Amateur Science

2010-07-30T18:54:52Z

Krang: Added "Amateur Projects Attracting Negative Attention" section

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Home Science; People who made a difference outside the lab.

= Thoughts to ponder =
* What separates an 'amateur' from a 'professional', sheer size of funding and lab space?
* Have all the 'low hanging fruit' in the world of science really been picked?
* Science, innovation, and ingenuity in the home or garage helped win WWII during a time of great need for anything and everything

{{quotebox|
They came first for the chemists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a chemist.

Then they came for the electronics designers,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't an electronics designer.

Then they came for the computer security experts,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a computer security expert.

And then they came for me,
And by that time no one was left to speak up.
}}

= Quotes =
* "Amateur Science allows people to delve into the unknown, unrestricted by their school or labs and what not. That is what true science should be, entering into a mindset that is new and different."
* "To criminalize the necessary materials of discovery is one of the worst things you can do in a free society," - Shawn Carlson
* "People who want to make meth will find ways to do it that don’t require an Erlenmeyer flask. But raising a generation of people who are technically incompetent is a recipe for disaster." - Bill Nye

= Chemistry =
* Amateur chemistry should not be confused with clandestine chemistry
* Amateur chemistry is in a legal gray-area, with no laws expressly outlawing it exist (though restrictions on certain chemicals and fire safety exist), no laws (and likely little case law) exist to help legitimize it either

* Notable home chemistry
** Charles Goodyear - Invented rubber vulcanization on his stove by mixing uncured rubber with sulfur powder.
** Marie Curie - Discovered radiation in her barn.
** Charles Martin Hall - Co-inventor of the Hall-Héroult process for aluminum extraction from aluminum oxide/ore, developed in a garden shed
** Louis Daguerre - Discovered the first photographic process using silver, iodine, and mercury vapor in 1873

* Further reading
** http://sas.org/tcs/weeklyIssues_2005/2005-08-12/backscatter/index.html
** http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/chemistry.html
** http://www.amazingrust.com/Amateur_Science/Amateur_Science.html

= Rocketry =
* Armadillo Aerospace
** Initially amateurs interested in rocketry, formed a startup company
** http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home/FAQ
** Developed a concept lunar lander independent of government funding, winning the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge level 1 and 2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Lander_Challenge)
** Currently innovating in orbital flight systems

= Astronomy =
* Amateur astronomers helped provide worldwide skyward facing telescopes and observatories to aid NASA in tracking the Apollo 13 mission.
* Amateur Astronomers
** George Alcock, discoverer of comets and novae.
** Thomas Bopp, shared the discovery of Comet Hale-Bopp in 1995 with unemployed PhD physicist Alan Hale.
** Robert Burnham, Jr., author of the Celestial Handbook.
** Andrew Ainslie Common (1841 – 1903), built his own very large reflecting telescopes and demonstrated that photography could record astronomical features invisible to the human eye.
** Robert E. Cox (1917–1989) who conducted the "Gleanings for ATMs" column in Sky and Telescope magazine for 21 years.
** John Dobson (1915), whose name is associated with the Dobsonian telescope, a simplified design for Newtonian reflecting telescopes.
** Robert Owen Evans is a minister of the Uniting Church in Australia and an amateur astronomer who holds the all-time record for visual discoveries of supernovae.
** Clinton B. Ford (1913–1992), who specialized in the observation of variable stars.
** Will Hay, the famous comedian and actor, who discovered a white spot on Saturn.
** Walter Scott Houston (1912–1993) who wrote the "Deep-Sky Wonders" column in Sky & Telescope magazine for almost 50 years.
** Albert G. Ingalls (1888–1958), editor of Amateur Telescope Making, Vols. 1-3 and "The Amateur Scientist". He and Russell Porter are generally credited with having initiated the amateur telescope making movement in the U. S.
** David H. Levy discovered or co-discovered 22 comets including Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, the most for any individual.
** Sir Patrick Moore, presenter of the BBC's long-running The Sky at Night and author of many books on astronomy.
** Leslie Peltier was a prolific discoverer of comets and well-known observer of variable stars.
** John M. Pierce (1886–1958) was one of the founders of the Springfield Telescope Makers. In the 1930s he published a series of 14 articles on telescope making in Hugo Gernsback's "Everyday Science and Mechanics" called "Hobbygraphs".
* Russell W. Porter founded Stellafane and has been referred to as the "founder"[1][2] or one of the "founders" of amateur telescope making."[3]
** Isaac Roberts, early experimenter in astronomical photography.
** Grote Reber (1911—2002), pioneer of radio astronomy constructing the first purpose built radio telescope and conducted the first sky survey in the radio frequency.

Source: wikipedia

= Amateur Radio =
* Experimentation throughout the years expanded upon capabilities of radio broadcasts

= Computer Science =
* Daily innovations, open source projects
* Fill this section in

= Amateur Projects Attracting Negative Attention =
This section may need its own page
*[http://www.interestingprojects.com/cruisemissile/ Bruce Simpson's $5000 Cruise Missile], which was conducted very openly, was aggressively shut down by the New Zealand Government by bankrupting him. See [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3302763.stm BBC] and [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/12/10/diy_5k_cruise_project_shut/ Register] articles.

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