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Top 10 Science Experiments

1. Double-slit electron diffraction
In Young's double-slit experiment, c. 1801, he passed a beam of light through two parallel slits in an opaque screen, forming a pattern of alternating light and dark bands on a white surface beyond. This led Young to reason that light was composed of waves.

2. Falling objects
Galileo Galilei's experiment of dropping balls of different masses from the Leaning Tower of Paris demonstartes that their time of descent was independent to their mass.

3. Oil-drop Experiment
In 1910, Robert A. Millikan published the first results of his oil-drop experimentin which he measured the charge on a single electron. Eventually it was found that the values measured were always multiples of the same number.

4. Newton's experiment with a prism
Newton realized that the spectrum of colours observed when white light passes through a prism is inherent in the white light and not added by the prism and notably argued that light is composed of particles.

5. Young discovered interference of light
The result of the experiment was a shadow of alternating light and dark bands — a phenomenon that could be explained if the two beams were interacting like waves. Bright bands appeared where two crests overlapped, reinforcing each other; dark bands marked where a crest lined up with a trough, neutralizing each other.

6. Cavendish experiment
In physics, the Cavendish experiment was the first experiment to accurately measure the gravitational constant by measuring the force of gravity between two masses in the laboratory.

7. Measurement of the Earth
With the given estimates of the distance between the two cities,Alexandria and Syene, Eratosthenes was able to calculate the circumference of the Earth. The exact length of the units (stadia) he used is doubtful, and the accuracy of his result is therefore uncertain; it may have varied by 0.5 to 17 percent from the value accepted by modern astronomers.

8. Galileo's experiment on inclined planes
Galileo's experiment of rolling a ball on a curved track later led to Newton’s First Law of Motion. His experiment to show that the distance is actually proportional to the square of the time: Double it and the ball would go four times as far. The reason is that it is being constantly accelerated by gravity.

9. Rutherford scattering
A beam of alpha particles was fired at layers of gold leaf only a few atoms thick, they were surprised that a tiny percentage of them came bouncing back. Rutherford calculated that actually atoms were not so mushy after all. Most of the mass must be concentrated in a tiny core, now called the nucleus, with the electrons hovering around it.

10. Foucault's pendulum
Foucault's pendulum was the first dynamical proof of the earth revolves in an easy-to-see experiment which awed the whole world.

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