Scientific method
Science (from the Latin word scientia, meaning "knowledge") is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable
explanations and predictions about the universe.
The earliest roots of science can be traced to Ancient Egypt and
Mesopotamia in around 3500 to 3000 BCE. Their contributions to mathematics, astronomy, and medicine entered and shaped Greek natural philosophy of classical antiquity, whereby formal attempts were made to explain
events of the physical world based on natural causes. After the fall of the
Western Roman Empire, knowledge of Greek conceptions of the world deteriorated in Western Europe during the early centuries (400 to 1000 CE) of
the Middle Ages but was preserved in the Muslim world during the Islamic
Golden Age. The recovery and assimilation of Greek works and Islamic inquiries into Western Europe from the 10th to 13th century revived natural
philosophy, which was later transformed by the Scientific Revolution that
began in the 16th century as new ideas and discoveries departed from previous Greek conceptions and traditions. The scientific method soon played
a greater role in knowledge creation and it was not until the 19th century
that many of the institutional and professional features of science began to
take shape.
Modern science is typically divided into three major branches that consist of
the natural sciences (e.g., biology, chemistry, and physics), which study nature in the broadest sense; the social sciences (e.g., economics, psychology, and sociology), which study individuals and societies; and the formal
sciences (e.g., logic, mathematics, and theoretical computer science),
which study abstract concepts. There is disagreement, however, on
whether the formal sciences actually constitute a science as they do not
rely on empirical evidence. Disciplines that use existing scientific
knowledge for practical purposes, such as engineering and medicine, are
described as applied sciences.
Science is based on research, which is commonly conducted in academic
and research institutions as well as in government agencies and companies. The practical impact of scientific research has led to the emergence of
science policies that seek to influence the scientific enterprise by prioritizing
the development of commercial products, armaments, health care, and environmental protection.
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ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS) is one of the five particle detector experiments (ALICE, ATLAS, CMS, TOTEM, and LHCb) being constructed at
the Large Hadron Collider, a new particle accelerator at CERN in Switzerland. It will be 45 metres long and 25 metres in diameter, and will weigh
about 7,000 tonnes. The project involves roughly 2,000 scientists and
engineers at 151 institutions in 34 countries. The construction was completed in 2008. The experiment is expected to measure phenomena that involve highly massive particles which were not measurable using earlier
lower-energy accelerators and might shed light on new theories of particle
physics beyond the Standard Model.
The ATLAS collaboration, the group of physicists building the detector, was
formed in 1992 when the proposed EAGLE (Experiment for Accurate
Gamma, Lepton and Energy Measurements) and ASCOT (Apparatus with
Super COnducting Toroids) collaborations merged their efforts into building
a single, general-purpose particle detector for the Large Hadron Collider.
The design was a combination of those two previous designs, as well as
the detector research and development that had been done for the
Superconducting Supercollider.
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A Tesla coil is a category of disruptive discharge transformer coils, named
after their inventor, Nikola Tesla. Tesla coils are composed of coupled resonant electric circuits. Nikola Tesla actually experimented with a large variety of coils and configurations, so it is difficult to describe a specific mode
of construction that will meet the wants of those who ask about "Tesla"
coils. "Early coils" and "later coils" vary in configuration and setup. Tesla
coils in general are very popular devices among high-voltage enthusiasts.
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