Mr. Wizard's 400 Experiments in Science

How does one learn to do experiments? By doing many of them, of course. The experiments need not be complicated; in fact, simple ones are best for learning. They need not be original; repeating what others have done before is a good way to learn. The important thing is that the experiments be new to the person doing them and that the person practice observing for themself rather than always taking the word of others for what is supposed to happen. Something important occurs when you do experiments yourself and make your own observations. You begin to observe things that are not described in the instructions. Sometimes these observations are quite puzzling; often they contradict what you learned before. Then you are in the same situation as a scientist facing the unknown. When this happens to you while doing an experiment, don't drop the puzzle. Face the contradiction squarely. Try to design a new experiment to find out more about the problem and to provide new observations for solving the puzzle. Don't just sit back and read about the experiments in this book. Be sure to try them yourself. Of course, you will not have time to do all of them, but do as many as you can.