Experiments For The Independent Science Society

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Experiments For The Independent Science Society<br>Some stuff you could try!<br>CasualPhysicsEnjoyer<br>Aug 04, 2026

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The Independent Science Society wants to figure out how to good empiricism independently. One approach to do this has been figuring out how to scale a variety of hard experiments to the home scale and thinking if the phenomena translates well at small size.<br>The final result we want is a list of non-trivial, phenomena-rich, and novel experiments that might be possible to do in a home setting with some effort.<br>If we do this we hope to find interesting technical barriers to physical experimentation that can be reduced. We also hope that we can train ourselves to become better empiricists in a world that is becoming increasingly uncertain. Another useful side effect is home empiricism being a channel for theorists to start experimenting, so that the theory-experiment gap is bridged, and that problem selection by theorists is more aligned.<br>Overall though, it's just fun!<br>We hope that the experiments below have at least one of the following properties:<br>historical significance to humanity, so that they're worth replicating even if they've been done a thousand times

interesting phenomena that still aren't fully fleshed out

scope for improvement in experimental technique, such that people could do them at home

the weird property of being 'table-toppy', as written about in On Reduction to the Table Top, and have a chance of being 'scaled down'

The below is a list of some experiments that I myself I've been thinking about to contribute to the list. So inevitably it is slightly tilted to my interests. Nothing here is original: neither the Society nor I take any credit for the ideas (although I am responsible for what I've written here), and the ideas here are a brainstorm from many ongoing discussions with cool people.

Physics

Reconstructing Galileo's classic experiments and seeing if they can be done in any reasonable time in a classroom session<br>The classic isochronism experiment of a ball moving down a ramp and a spiral

Observing the craters on the Moon in the style of the old telescopes made by the Dutch during the 17th century

Dropping two things in a vacuum tube and seeing if they fall at the same rate<br>Corollary — make a much cheaper vacuum tube than the ones you can buy, and then see when the air resistance approximations become legit

A rehash of the mysteries around the Crookes radiometer<br>A replication of the Crooke's radiometer in a full vacuum

I still think this hasn't been fully resolved — is there a more cohesive explanation?

Foucault's pendulum<br>Currently, a Foucault's pendulum needs to be 67m long for people to see the effect. Is a desktop Foucault's pendulum possible? If not, why not?

Investigating the boiling point of water under different conditions<br>Can you consistently boil water at the same temperature? (See Hasok Chang's Inventing Temperature)

Recreating Lord Kelvin's early experiments in trying to fix the boiling point of water

More macro-scale demonstrations of thermal physics<br>For example, a really easy way to measure the temperature change of a hot and a cold liquid meeting and then coming to equilibrium

A gas piston which shows the Carnot cycle more clearly

Macro-scale demonstrations of emergent organised phenomena<br>Replicating Rayleigh-Bénard convection cell experiments and the critical temperature at which they occur — predicting the number of cells that form under different conditions

A replication of the original Couette flow experiment<br>How do we make a Taylor-Couette flow cell much more cheaply?

Whirlpools from flux

A macro-scale demonstration of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, like the Onsager effect<br>Welding together a thermocouple to make a current from temperature differences

Making an artificially noisy system and then using it to test physics that is impacted by noise / thermal effects

A stricter replication of Brown's original observations of Brownian motion

Electrical conductivity in salt water — how does it change as we vary the concentration?

Astronomy

Observing craters on the Moon like Galileo did

Amateur astrophotography is already a huge field, but cameras are expensive - is there a way to collect astronomical data that is a lot cheaper?

Chemistry

Can we find safer oscillating chemical reactions to study at home? Some ideas might be<br>Belousov-Zhabotinsky reactions without the annoying bromine part

Briggs-Rauscher with lower concentrations of hydrogen peroxide, since high-concentration hydrogen peroxide is hazardous

What would be a minimal, non-trivial chemical reaction network to try and measure?

Biology and Ecology

Beginner-ish safe genetic engineering tasks, like<br>Staining tobacco plant leaves using genetic engineering

Making yeast fluorescent using genetic engineering

Measuring photosynthesis rates from CO2 concentrations with a home...