Diversity to Match the Need

Perhaps no other aspect of experimental research, as an orga­nized activity, has so much diversity as the setup, often referred to as the apparatus, used for carrying out the experiment. With some reservation, we may say that there are as many setups as there are researchers. Notable exceptions are the standard equip­ment used repeatedly, either in succession or during the same period on a time-sharing basis; a good example is an electron microscope, usually one-of-a-kind equipment in moderate-size research labs. But even here, elaborate as it is, it is only a piece of equipment, seldom used “stand alone,” unconnected with any other auxiliary equipment. In terms of the “connections,” either physical or schematic, each investigator is likely to have his or her own idiosyncrasies. For instance, it is quite reasonable to expect that an experimental setup in a chemistry lab will be dif­ferent from that used in an electrical engineering lab; the differ­ence relates to pieces of equipment, the nature of connections among them, the measuring instruments for recording the data, the safety devices, and so on. Besides, considering the researcher’s need and purpose, further subject to the individual viewpoint and approach, each setup, in a sense, is the contriv­ance of the particular researcher. Hence, we restrict the discus­sion here only to those aspects that are somewhat common to most research equipment in diverse subject areas.

Source: Srinagesh K (2005), The Principles of Experimental Research, Butterworth-Heinemann; 1st edition.