Science, the old-school way.

Occasionally, part of my job requires me to read through a scientific journal, work out what the hell they're on about, and then replicate that in our own lab.

Today was such a day.

This paper describes how oxygen gets redissolved in 'flat' water at different rates depending on the wind speed. There's not much work done in this field - why would you remove oxygen from water in order to put it back in naturally? As it turns out, we have a useful application for it, and I need to understand this particular journal article, because there aren't any others. Do not let the fact that this paper was written in 1955 bother you at all.

What does bother me is some of the short-cuts and assumptions they've used. I was becoming more worried as I read, and evidently they knew they were being a bit dodgy when they included this line:

There is, of course, a great deal of uncertainty in this finding, and the agreement may be entirely fortuitous.

For the non-technical out there, I'll translate:

We don't know where these numbers really come from, and the fact that it works is probably just dumb luck.


Ah, the good old days. You just can't do that sort of thing any more.




The song that got annoyingly stuck in my head today:
I Get A Kick Out Of You