A scientific instrument is, broadly speaking, a device or tool used for scientific purposes, including the study of both natural phenomena and theoretical research.
Video Scientific instrument
History
Historically, the definition of a scientific instrument has varied, based on usage, laws, and historical time period. Before the mid-nineteenth century such tools were referred to as "natural philosophical" or "philosophical" apparatus and instruments, and older tools from antiquity to the Middle Ages (such as the astrolabe and pendulum clock) defy a more modern definition of "a tool developed to investigate nature qualitatively or quantitatively." Scientific instruments were made by instrument makers living near a center of learning or research, such as a university or research laboratory. Instrument makers designed, constructed, and refined instruments for specific purposes, but if demand was sufficient, an instrument would go into production as a commercial product. By World War II, the demand for improved analyses of wartime products such as medicines, fuels, and weaponized agents pushed instrumentation to new heights. Today, changes to instruments used in scientific endeavors -- particularly analytical instruments -- are occurring rapidly, with interconnections to computers and data management systems becoming increasingly necessary.
Maps Scientific instrument
Scope
Scientific instruments vary greatly in size, shape, purpose, complication and complexity. This includes relatively simple laboratory equipment like scales, rulers, chronometers, thermometers, etc. Other simple tools developed in late 20th century or early 21st century are Foldscope (an optical microscope), KAS Periodic Table (SCALE), MasSpec Pen (pen that detects cancer), glucose meter, etc. However, some scientific instruments can be quite large in size and significant in complexity, like particle colliders or radio-telescope antennas. Conversely microscale and nanoscale technologies are advancing to the point where instrument sizes are shifting towards the tiny, including nanoscale surgical instruments, biological nanobots, and bioelectronics.
The digital era
Instruments are increasingly based upon integration with computers to improve and simplify control; enhance and extend instrumental functions, conditions, and parameter adjustments; and streamline data sampling, collection, resolution, analysis (both during and post-process), and storage and retrieval. Advanced instruments can be connected as a local area network (LAN) directly of via middleware and can be further integrated as part of an information management application such as a laboratory information management system (LIMS). Instrument connectivity can be furthered even more using internet of things (IoT) technologies, allowing for example laboratories separated by great distances to connect their instruments to a network that can be monitored from a workstation or mobile device elsewhere.
Examples of scientific instruments
List of scientific instruments manufacturers
List of scientific instruments designers
- Jones, William
- Kipp, Petrus Jacobus
- Le Bon, Gustave
- Roelofs, Arjen
- Schöner, Johannes
- Von Reichenbach, Georg Friedrich
History of scientific instruments
- History of science and technology in the People's Republic of China
Museums
- Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments (CHSI)
- Boerhaave Museum
- Chemical Heritage Foundation
- Deutsches Museum
- Royal Victoria Gallery for the Encouragement of Practical Science
- Whipple Museum of the History of Science
Types of scientific instruments
- Optical instrument
- Electronic test equipment
See also
- Instrumentation
- Instrumentalism, a philosophic theory
- List of collectibles
- The dictionary definition of -tron at Wiktionary, a suffix to denote a complex scientific instrument, like in cyclotron, phytotron, synchrotron, ...
References
Source of article : Wikipedia
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