Spring is the Time to Begin a Science Project

Forrest M. Mims III

Recently an active member of the Society for Amateur Scientists (SAS) wrote to ask about how best to pursue a particular kind of research to a point that would result in a paper in a scholarly journal of science. Even more recently, a paper by another SAS member was published in a distinguished journal. A news story about this will appear in a forthcoming issue.

Developments like these are the best possible news in the world of citizen science. Many similar stories about the accomplishments and discoveries of diligent citizen scientists have appeared in The Citizen Scientist.

If you are not already engaged in a regular science activity or project, I invite you to consider beginning one in 2005. You have many choices, ranging from astronomy to zoology. One strong candidate is to collect a time series of data about anything that interests you. There are countless parameters just waiting to be measured by an alert and disciplined citizen scientists. Many parameters like weather, haze, traffic noise, sunlight, cloudiness and pedestrian numbers can be measured every day. Others can be observed occasionally, including contrails, severe weather events and plant growth. Still others can be observed only a few times a year, including bud burst, acorn size and abundance, tree girth and so forth. Many observations like these can be accomplished with only minimal instrumentation or even none at all.

A time series of observations of parameters like these can lead to completely unexpected discoveries and even scientific papers. I learned this first hand soon after beginning to make regular measurements of the sun and sky 17 years ago.

In May 1988, I began making regular measurements of direct solar ultraviolet-B (UV-B) in the field outside the tiny 2-room farm house that serves as my office and shop. By 4 February 1990, I was using a suite of homemade instruments to measure direct UV-B, the total amount of ozone and water vapor in a column through the atmosphere and the aerosol optical depth (or thickness) of the atmosphere. Sky appearance is noted, and temperature, relative humidity, dew point and pressure are measured. The main measurements are made at or near local solar noon on every day the sun is not obscured by clouds.

In 1995 I added a wide range of full-sky irradiance measurements to the daily observations. These include measurements of UV-B and photosynthetic radiation. In 1998 I added photographs of the solar aureole (the haze-modulated glow around the sun), the zenith sky and the sky over the north horizon. In 2001 fisheye photographs of the full sky were added.

This research program has resulted in a number of discoveries that were published in various scientific journals (and more papers are on the way). These papers attracted the attention of professional scientists and resulted in various assignments to take my instruments to Japan (for the Environmental Protection Administration) and Brazil (for NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center). They also attracted the attention of Dr. James Slusser, Program Director of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) UVB Radiation Monitoring Program. One year ago the latest USDA UV-B site was placed nearby on the roof of the Moody Science Building at Texas Lutheran University in Seguin, Texas. This sophisticated array of automated instruments is now providing a major boost to the 15 years of regular measurements I've been making manually.

Spring is a great time to begin a measurements program. I started mine in May, and I hope to stay with it for at least 25 years. You can do the same thing, and now is not too early to start making plans. You don't need to conduct your project for as long as I have to make discoveries and establish a data base. And don't worry if you lack academic preparation in the science you choose to pursue. Do-it-yourself background research, hands-on experience and perseverance are more important to a successful science project than a stack of degrees.