If you read works of 19th century nautical fiction, much mention is made of captains consulting a “storm bottle”. From what I gather, it was some kind of barometer…does anybody know how they were constructed? Also, dothey actually give a reliable indication of a coming storm/atmospheric pressure drop?
There’s a photograph of one here. I’m still trying to find a description of how it works.
From here. Following this description are instructions for constructing one. Looks interesting, I might give it a go myself.
Also search on [. Apparently lots of sites are selling these.
They were mentioned on The Last Word: http://www.newscientist.com/lastword/article.jsp?id=lw297](http://www.google.com/search?q="storm+glass")
These things certainly don’t detect air pressure as some sites claim (at least the ones in sealed ampules don’t.) It would be interesting to make a timelapse of one of these, then see what happens to the changing crystal patterns if you enclose it in an electrically/magnetically shielded chamber with constant temp and pressure.
If the crystal patterns continued to change under those conditions, then you might have discovered a “sensor” for some kind of interesting signal (probably one which isn’t part of contemporary science.) Stranger things have happened. Scientific revolutions are sometimes triggered by one researcher looking into some small natural phenomenon which everyone else always ignored. Or at least it might make for a winning science fair project.
I’d bet that the thing stops changing when shielded. It might be responding to longwave IR or background b-fields or something, and an ironl temp-control chamber would remove this signal.
Thi site I linked to says it’s ambient air temperature which causes the response. It also says it’s not at all reliable for predicting the weather, as one might suspect.
Why do you say “probably”? While that’s certainly a possibility (a good scientist will never conclusively rule out anything), it’s a huge stretch to say that something so easily observable could have completely escaped the notice of modern science. We can measure the effects of the weak nuclear force to twenty decimal places, but you’re suggesting that we maybe can’t yet explain an “interesting signal” with results clearly visible to the unaided eye?
I decide to purchase one…you can make one easily enough, but I figured that getting the necessary chemicals would cost just as much (where on earth does one purchase camphor these days?). Anyway, the thing does seem to respond to atmosheric conditions…I’m keeping a log. and I will report on how this thing behaves. According to the mfg., the storm bottle was invented by Captain (later Admiral) Fitzroy R.N., who among other things, was captain of the HMS BEAGLE (Darwin’s expedition).
Just FYI, I used camphor for several kiddie chemistry experiments, and I found that some local (non-chain) pharmacies still carried it in flake and square tablet form. It sometimes the pharmacist had to do a bit of looking – but no more than when I was a kid. The recent interest in homeopathic and other alternative remedies has led many non-chain pharmacies to carry it again. The pharmacist may keep it ‘behind the counter’, not because it’s dangerous, but because it does not have enough turnover to justify taking up valuable display space.
Not at all.
New fields of science are sometimes born when a researcher follows up a particular observation which all other researchers have dismissed as uninteresting. Sure, science progresses when we build on research of the past, but science also progresses when we investigate unexpected anomalies. If the crystal patterns in a “storm glass” continue to change when the temperature is held constant, that’s mildly interesting. If the patterns continue to change when temperature, pressue, b-fields, and EM signals are all held constant, that might lead to some interesting physics. If the system is not just a chemical oscillator like the BZ reaction, what is causing the changing patterns?
Sure! It’s a major mistake to look at our expertise in extremely specialized fields and to therefore leap to the conclusion that all of nature is well understood, and such a major scientific discovery is no longer possible.
HIJACK!
The idea that signficant undiscovered fields of science cannot exist; that science is essentially at its end and revolutionary discoveries are no longer possible… this unfortunate attitude has been dubbed “Horganism” by physicist P. Anderson. (Inspired by J. Horgan’s controversial book “The end of science.”)
See: http://physicssanctuary.members.easyspace.com/PWAnderson.html
Here’s some famous Horganism from the turn of the century:
“The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote… Our future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth place of decimals.” -A. Michelson, 1894
“We are probably nearing the limit of all we can know about astronomy.” - S. Newcomb, 1888
“When I began my physical studies and sought advice from my venerable teacher Philipp von Jolly… he portrayed to me physics as a highly developed, almost fully matured science… Possibly in one or another nook there would perhaps be a dust particle or a small bubble to be examined and classified, but the system as a whole stood there fairly secured, and theoretical physics approached visibly that degree of perfection which, for example, geometry has had already for centuries.” - Max Planck
Any scientists of 1900 were obviously wrong when they believed that there were no major new discoveries left. But should we assume that things have changed, and that NOW there are no major new discoveries left? That’s a dangerous attitude for any scientist, since it will keep them from taking seriously any evidence leading to a major discovery should they ever stumble across it. Widespread belief that scientific revolutions are no longer possible can easly become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Here are some anti-Horganism quotes from my collection:
“We do not understand much of anything, from… the “big bang” , all the way down to the particles in the atoms of a bacterial cell. We have a wilderness of mystery to make our way through in the centuries ahead.” -Lewis Thomas
'The task is not to see what has never been seen before, but to think what has never been thought before about what you see everyday." - Erwin Schrodinger
“May every young scientist remember… and not fail to keep his eyes open for the possibility, that an irritating failure of his apparatus to give consistent results may once or twice in a lifetime conceal an important discovery.” - P. Blackett
“The whole of science consists of data that, at one time or another, were inexplicable.” - B. O’Regan
“There are children playing in the street who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago.” - Robert Oppenheimer
“They are ill discoverers that think there is no land when they see nothing but sea.” - Francis Bacon
Since the reaction taking place appears to be chemical (e.g., a change of state and/or a change in an equilibrium point between two states of a bidirectional reaction) then the first place to look for answers is among the conditions known to affect physical states and chemical reactions.
These conditions are, namely, pressure and temperature. If the bottle weren’t sealed, then I would go as far to include humidity and relative concentrations of significant atmospheric constituents, like O2 and CO2.
Further logic, from the other side of the causality coin: since the device is said to be sensitive to changes in weather, then why assume it’s sensitive to anything other than changes in those conditions that we call weather: temperature, pressure, solar radiation (and the obscuration thereof), and ocean surface conditions?
I would limit my search to those things, and conclusively exhaust them all, singly and in combination, before hypothesizing some mysterious “other” force. This is what rational investigation is all about.