Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- About the author
- 1 Setting the stage
- 2 Uncertain about science
- 3 Can the media help?
- 4 Unfamiliarity breeds uncertainty
- 5 Fever or chill?
- 6 A fifty–fifty chance
- 7 I'm not quite sure how this works …
- 8 Let's see what happens if …
- 9 Reconstructing the past
- 10 Predicting the future
- 11 Out of the blue
- 12 In a climate of uncertainty
- Index
5 - Fever or chill?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- About the author
- 1 Setting the stage
- 2 Uncertain about science
- 3 Can the media help?
- 4 Unfamiliarity breeds uncertainty
- 5 Fever or chill?
- 6 A fifty–fifty chance
- 7 I'm not quite sure how this works …
- 8 Let's see what happens if …
- 9 Reconstructing the past
- 10 Predicting the future
- 11 Out of the blue
- 12 In a climate of uncertainty
- Index
Summary
We're trying to measure bacteria with a yardstick.
Professor John A. Paulos, Temple UniversityAt a fundamental level, scientific uncertainty begins when we make measurements. What do we use to make a measurement? How well can that tool accomplish a measurement? To what precision can we determine the size or mass or temperature of an object? If we repeat a measurement many times, how closely will the individual measurements agree with each other?
Professor Paulos' comment about measuring bacteria was made in an unusual context that I will tell you more about later. The remark underscores, however, the importance of selecting a measuring device appropriate to the task at hand. One does not need the experience of a laboratory scientist to recognize that the likelihood of obtaining an accurate measurement of the length of a bacterium using a yardstick is intrinsically low. The smallest subdivision of the yardstick, usually 1/16 of an inch, a little less than two millimeters, is so much greater than the dimension of a bacterium (actually about 10,000 times greater) that, on the one hand, one cannot say much more about the length of a bacterium other than it is very much smaller than 1/16 of an inch. On the other hand, a yardstick could, in principle, estimate the length of five million bacteria lined up end to end.
Most textbooks of physics or chemistry introduce uncertainty in the context of measurement.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Uncertain Science ... Uncertain World , pp. 63 - 86Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003