I had my lab examination of an experiment that I had performed over the last six weeks. I was confident in my preparation for the viva and the demonstration. I believed I had covered all corners and gave it all the effort I could have.
My examiner walked into the room and asked a colleague who had a similar experiment a few questions, all of which I felt I knew the answers to. It was my turn next, and I felt good and calm. But when I introduced him to my experiment and had some discussions over it, he asked me one question: "If I increase the slit width, why do the spectral lines bulge/widen?" It was a simple yet important question that I failed to answer.
To which he subtly replied "Think about it" and walked away. But think I could not, I went into a free fall for another couple of hours, filled with sadness over the fact that I couldn't answer an important question of the experiment I had been doing for six weeks. The question was practically there the whole time! All I had to do was to take a good look at the setup and ask why is this slit even here? On the abstract, I knew why, it seemed trivial then, but when I was asked to go deep into the why, I failed to do so, mainly because I didn't give it much importance during the six weeks I had.
An experimentalist is one who looks at his/her setup and knows where errors would creep in and would focus on improving there. He/she would know the limits of the results one can obtain with their setup. Pushing it to great lengths is another topic altogether.
An experimentalist is also one who tackles the simple but basic/important questions first. Once the conceptually crucial questions are sorted, he/she can proceed to the next step. Read and question what you need to do, first! And then start/jump to the fun experiments. For every piece of equipment in your setup, there should be a reason for why is it there and what does it help with.
Happy learning! And until the next experimental screw up,
Yours,
Danush S, 3 February, 2021