- In the third century BC, the Greek scholar Eratosthenes measured the Earth: first example.
- Isaac Newton’s experiment on the color of light serves as the second illustration.
- The third instance is the 1960s starfish experiment conducted by American ecologist Robert Paine.
Every day, researchers from all around the world carry out experiments to find potentially life-changing answers. They begin with an “if” question and end with a “then” question. Measurements of the world, light color, and stressed starfish experiments are a few of the most well-known scientific experiments.
In the third century BC, the Greek scholar Eratosthenes measured the Earth, which serves as the first example. Eratosthenes measured the shadow a vertical stick cast in Alexandria, Egypt, and concluded that the angle of the sun’s light was 7.2 degrees or 1/50th of the 360 degrees of a circle.
Scientific discoveries
Along with calculating the distance between Alexandria and Syene, he also calculated the curvature of the Earth, which came out to be 45,866 km, very near to the actual circumference of our planet, which is 40,072 km.
Isaac Newton’s experiment on the color of light serves as the second illustration. He assembled a prism experiment to demonstrate how different colors were refracted differently through a prism in 1665, while he was a student at Cambridge. He had taken a prism from a neighborhood fair. This experiment transformed our understanding of the fundamental characteristics of light and founded the field of optics.
The third instance is the 1960s starfish experiment conducted by American ecologist Robert Paine. Paine threw purple starfish back into the Pacific Ocean after removing them from rocks in tidal pools along Washington’s coast.
It was discovered that the elimination of a single species could upset the equilibrium of the ecosystem as a whole, resulting in the collapse of the food chain and the growth of mussels. Paine introduced the idea that some species contribute more to an ecosystem than others when he referred to the starfish as a keystone species. This idea changed the game.
The implementation of an ecosystem-based management strategy and conservation efforts have both benefited greatly from these scientific experiments.
