Keeping a laboratory notebook:
an exemplar
G W Series
2 Monkton House Close, Old Boars Hill, Oxford, OX1 SJQ, UK
Received 20 February 1991
Abstract. A page from one of Rutherfords notebooks is
offeredas an example for our students.
Example is better than precept. And what b t t e r
example of a laboratory notebook than that of Lord
Rutherford?
The keeping of a laboratory notebook is no trivial
matter. The backs of envelopes serve well for rough-
ing out great ideas (Arthur Schawlow, pioneer laser
spectroscopist and Nobel Laureate, devised special
envelopes having two hacks for use in times of pro-
found mental activity) but for your everyday stint at
the bench scraps of paper simply will not do, and that
is a hard lesson for students to leam. So we circulated,
in our Department at Reading, a page (not the origi-
nal) extracted from one of Rutherford‘s notebooks,
together with a double page copied from the volume
of Philosophical Transadions which showed the
‘polished account’ of the experiment whose essentials
were recorded in the notebook. There was no control
group of students prevented from gaining access
to these instructive papers, so whether the students
actually profited it is not possible to say, but those in
charge of the student laboratories thought it worth
the effort, and we show below the texts in question in
case others may think it worth while to follow our
example.
Page 49 of Rutherford‘s laboratory notebook for
1918 is here reproduced by permission of the Syndics
of Cambridge University Library where it is refer-
enced under Add. MS 76531NB23. The polished
account appears on pp 562-3 of volume 31 of
Philosophical Magazine (1919) and is reproduced by
permission of Taylor & Francis.
We drew attention, in the paper we circulated to
our students, to the following features of the notes:
. the date;
brief statement of object of experiment (title);
sketch of apparatus, with dimensions;
formula for working out results;
brief record of what was done (silver foil
RLslunb. Une page d’un camel de Rutherford se presente
a nos etudiants comme mod&
placed . . .) and of the refinements called for in
preliminary trials (silver foil replaced . . .);
record of observations, with units (amps,
centimetres);
working out of final result and its tentative
nature ‘(field only roughly known).
We drew attention also in our paper to certain small
differences between the quantities as recorded in the
notes and in the article: the distance A B is 2.35 cm in
the notes, 2.85cm in the article; deflection of a-rays
3.5” in the notes, 3.9” in the a r t i c l e b u t mag-
netic field about 8000G in the notes, 9000 in the
article. It would appear, then, that the notebook
describes a ‘pilot’ experiment and that the apparatus
had been improved by increasing the field (and
therefore the deflection) before the measurements
recorded in the article were made. The running of a
pilot experiment is a useful notion for the student to
be introduced to.
However, it is difficult to reconcile the two sets of
figures taken at their face value. If we scale up the
‘notebook‘ deflection 3.5 mm by the ratio of the fields,
9000/8000, we arrive at the ‘article’ deflection 3.9”;
whereas if we build in also the ’article’ distance AB,
2.85cm, to replace the original 2.35 cm, we arrive at a
deflection 4.3 mm. Could it be, then, that the 2.85 cm
in the article was a misprint? To copy 3 as 8 would be
an understandable slip. A further point for the
student, then: check for copying errors; someone
might follow you up and could conceivably wonder
whether you had cooked your books!
Finally, to place the article in context, we added to
our covering paper the note: ‘the work described in
this paper forms part of Rutherford’s important
discovery of the artificial transmutation of nuclei by
bombardment with a-particles. The complete work is
described in four articles which appear in sequence in
Phil. Mog. 37, and which have great historical
importance.’
202 G W Series

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 Keeping a laboratory notebook: an exemplar 203

Figure 2. Pages 562-563 at volume 37 of Philosophical Magazine (1919).

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* Camnnuoic.xred by the .Author. & d a r i m ui the prncii o f n rays irom iaoium C .