Scientific English as a Foreign Language
Answers to Lesson of September 19, 1997
Experience and Experiment
An experiment is what you do to investigate something. It is the process by which you learn something. Also, please don't use the word "experiment" to refer to the instrumentation with which you do the experiment. You can say "experimental setup", but the experiment is the PROCEDURE you use to test a hypothesis.
An experience is something that happens to you that is memorable in some way. Here are some of the definitions.
EXPERIENCE:
-noun
1. a particular instance of personally encountering or undergoing something:
My encounter with the bear in the woods was a frightening experience.
2. the process or fact of personally observing, encountering, or undergoing
something: business experience.
3. the observing, encountering, or undergoing of things generally as
they occur in the course of time: to learn from experience; the range
of human experience.
4. knowledge or practical wisdom gained from what one has observed,
encountered, or undergone: a man of experience.
5. Philos. the totality of the cognitions given by perception; all
that is perceived, understood, and remembered.
-transitive verb
6. to have experience of; meet with; undergo; feel: to experience nausea.
7. to learn by experience.
8. experience religion, to undergo a spiritual conversion by which one
gains or regains faith in God.
EXPERIMENT:
1. a test, trial, or tentative procedure; an act or operation for the
purpose of discovering something unknown or of testing a principle, supposition,
etc.: a chemical experiment; a teaching experiment; an experiment in
living.
2. the conducting of such operations; experimentation: a product
that is the result of long experiment.
To summarize, experiences are personal, and experiments are scientific. Test your knowledge!
1. I went helicopter skiing last year. What an experience!
2. The experiment indicates that the modulus of a single nanotube
is approximately 1 TPa.
3. The sample is not fixed rigidly in place. Why don't you experiment
with different glues?
4. I have little experience with research. I'm still an undergraduate.
There was a young fellow named Cole
Who ventured too near a black hole.
His dv by dt
Was quite wonderous to see
But now all that's left is his soul.
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Created May 11, 1998, by Nancy Burnham and Fred Hutson.