Randomness

RANDOMNESS

An important concept in science is randomness. This simply has to do with the complete absence of order, when something happens without an ordinary kind of cause that you can see or measure. When you form a choose-up softball game in the neighborhood, you try to divide the teams evenly by balancing the good athletes against each other and also the kids like you, who may not be so good at sports (but are instead smart and mature and who understand science much better than the others). This means you form the two teams with some basic purpose, and the selection of the players for each side is done with a regular kind of order in mind. But if after the game all of you decide to room around the neighborhood and overturn birdbaths or smash gazing globes with the bat or fill up mailboxes with stones and dirt or simply beat up on whatever youngsters happen to cross your path, then the absence of any real plan or order in choosing what or who you will inflict injury upon means that you have chosen at random. Much of current science – especially in molecular biology and in physics – involves separating those happenings that are random from those that are not.

You can conduct an experiment in randomness which many young scientists enjoy. Take a clear tall glass or a medium-sized bowl. Go to the bathroom, and into the container pour a small amount of anything you want to from the medicine chest. This will include such substances as cough syrup, mercurochrome, antiseptic salves and ointments, various allergy solutions, skin medications, colognes and after shaves, crushed pills and opened capsules, shampoos and hair treatments, alcohols and rubbing fluids, and so on and so forth, all that stuff in those bottles that are sometimes hard to open but which eventually you can get into, especially if you have a pair of pliers. Pay no attention to what you use, or how much. Use a lot of this and a little of that, or none of this and all of that. Do not think about what you are doing; remember, this is an experiment in randomness.

After a while, you will see that what has accumulated in the vessel is a dark, stinky-smelling sludge. How about that! This is an example of what randomness can lead to. You chose the ingredients of your preparation at random, and therefore all you have to show for it is an unattractive pasty mixture that seems to serve no purpose.

(You may take this experiment several steps further by placing the concoction in the oven, as with the chemical change experiment. However, Mother may not fully understand the scientific principles behind this step, so be careful. The same goes for pouring your random mixture into a plastic bottle, sealing it tightly, and placing this “flask” into the dryer for a good spinning. Many young scientists find this homemade “centrifuge” very interesting, but many young scientists’ parents find this stage of the experiment too advanced and object very loudly. If you are able to complete this phase of the experiment, though, you’ll find that what happens to the mixture is that the solids are pressed against one side of the bottle and the liquids in the stuff are separated from them. Neither the solids nor the liquids are much use for anything either, but at least you had a good time and learned something about randomness.)

The same experiments can be conducted with the contents of the refrigerator, the kitchen cupboard, or the liquor cabinet. Do anything you want with these materials. Do not, however, eat or drink any of the mixture, and do not ask Sister to do so either. If, however, she does sample some of it, be sure to observe her reactions carefully. You may wish to describe her responses in a lab notebook.

Next