Old Dirt - New Thoughts

I admit that I am a bit of a science geek — Ok, I admit I’m a major science geek. I love reading and hearing about people doing science. I’m fascinated with the scientific process, with the personalities, the vision (or lack thereof), and the occasional dumb-luck involved. While prepping for a lecture I’m giving tomorrow in my Principles of Archaeology class, I stumbled across this interesting account on the development of radiocarbon dating. Written by E. H. Willis in 1996,  this “Worm’s Eye View” describes his experiences as a young graduate student in the 1950s working for Harry Goodwin and Alfred Maddock at Cambridge’s brand new radiocarbon laboratory. In fact it was so new that most of the fascilities didn’t exist. Willis, as the grad student, was often responsible for building the necessary equipment.

In these days of almost trouble free electronics and fancy desk top computers, it is difficult to imagine a situation where you had to fight your electronics each and every day. Vacuum tubes always needed replacement, capacitors sprung leaks, and resistances burned out.  . . .  One could not obtain commercially, or even build oneself, an electronic means of making a high voltage power supply for the counter. We needed a long-lived supply of about eight thousand volts, stable and spike free. This was accomplished by buying literally hundreds of deaf aid batteries, stringing them together like sausages, and immersing them in ceresin wax. I had a certain interest in the lethality of this contraption, and laced it liberally with mega-ohm resistors. However, on applying the high voltage to the counter, I still had to stand on a rubber mat and discharge myself to a piece of metal with an audible spark coming from my finger. Surprisingly, this proved to be the only trouble free part of the apparatus for many years.

Willis goes on to describe running their first archaeological sample - a piece of wood from Star Carr. These days, with the ease of dating offered by labs like Beta Analytic which alone processes 5000 AMS samples each year, its amazing to think about obtaining that first absolute date - 7600 BC +/- 210.

Willis’s “Worm’s Eye View” includes a healthy dose of his witty perspective. In describing his beginnings in interdisciplinary research he writes,

[My fellow graduate student], Richard [West] and his cohorts gave me my first taste of inter-disciplinary science. Prior to this time a geophysicist, for instance, was looked upon as an indifferent geologist and a lousy physicist who had taken a soft option. Today, such interdisciplinary research is not only taken for granted, but has proven to be the vital synergism for some spectacular advances.

It’s definately worth reading, especially if you’re like me and just find the doing of science fun, whether its archaeology, geology, or even physics.