12 November 2004

The citizen scientist's most important tool

Forrest M. Mims III

A while back George E. Hrabovsky and I were discussing the most important tools available to citizen and amateur scientists.

My nomination was the digital camera. The amateur scientist equipped with a digital camera can photograph birds, tree rings, sunsets, clouds, experiments, insects, flowers, tree canopies, soil samples, surf, storms, bones, circuit boards, stars and planets.

Using moderately priced software, the amateur can crop, enhance, analyze and archive thousands of photographs on a computer hard drive or a stack of CD-ROMs. Digital photography has become so important that I told George I planned to devote an editorial to the subject.

Case closed; the digital camera is the ultimate amateur science tool.

But George had another candidate. After having built the case for the digital camera, George demolished my nomination with only three words: "The personal computer."

Of course George is correct. The computer is indeed a superior tool. After all, what use is a digital camera without a computer to process, manipulate, crop, sort and store the images?

Virtually all the science I do is greatly enhanced by various computers. You can see some of the results here. So now it's your turn. How has the availability of personal computers and sophisticated software influenced the science you do?

Do you use a computer to retrieve science images and data from the web? Do you use spreadsheets and other software to analyze data? Do you process science images using a computer?

If you would like to share your computer applications with readers of The Citizen Scientist, send them in an e-mail to Backscatter. If you have any graphics, charts, images or other science related products produced by a computer, please send some good examples of these, also. This is your chance to inspire the rest of us with how the computer has enhanced the science you do.