The Interdisciplinary Laboratory

The Laboratory Rationale

"You can learn a lot by just observing."
Yogi Berra

Laboratory science never began being called physics, chemistry, or biology. Experimental work started out as the careful recording of observations. Sometimes those observations were recorded on stone tablets, sometimes they were handed down by oral tradition.  Nowadays we put observations in writing, but somewhere along the way we seem to have compartmentalized that writing into physics, engineering, or whatever else.  The fact remains that experimental work has a life of its own and owes allegiance to no modern discipline.  Your experience at Harvey Mudd will put you in biology, chemistry, engineering, and physics laboratories.  The point of the previous words and this text is to show out that data taking, the recording of observations, and data analysis are universal procedures without labels of discipline.  The features that make a good engineering table also make a good chemistry table.  The principles that make a good physics graph also make a good biology graph.  There is no set of physics rules, for example, for drawing graphs that is different from those of any other discipline.

Interdisciplinary research is increasingly the name of the game.  From the belief that many common research themes exist in biology, chemistry, and physics, such as the recording of observations alluded to above, came the drive to establish an introductory laboratory program that would seek to combine aspects of biology, chemistry, and physics.  This effort is locally called the Interdisciplinary Laboratory or the ID lab.

The developers of this work represent the three disciplines, yet it was not difficult for all to agree on group of experiments which well illustrate, as least in the minds of the  developers, many themes and approaches to investigation that are common to the three disciplines as well as important discipline specific concepts and principles.

The interdisciplinary laboratory is an adventurous work in progress with the input from you, the laboratory student, the proof of the pudding.