Image and logic: a material culture of microphysics

TLDR

Physics research has shifted from solitary benchtop experiments to large, collaborative, city‑block‑scale projects involving programming, industry, and politics. The study examines how modern technology reshapes the role of experimental physicists. The study finds that the growing scale and complexity of experimental apparatus has alienated physicists from the core science and fragmented microphysics, while teamwork around multimillion‑dollar machines has created dynamic trading zones where instrument makers, theorists, and experimentalists collaborate.

Abstract

This study engages with the impact of modern technology on experimental physicists. It reveals how the ever-increasing scale and complexity of apparatus has distanced physicists from the very science which drew them into experimenting, and has fragmented microphysics into different technical traditions. At the beginning of this century, physics was usually done by a lone researcher who put together experimental apparatus on a benchtop. Now experiments are frequently larger than a city block, and experimental physicists lead very different lives - programming computers, working with industry, co-ordinating vast teams of scientists and engineers, and playing politics. The author describes how, as a result of these changes, the necessity for teamwork in operating multimillion-dollar machines has created dynamic trading zones, where instrument makers, theorists and experimentalists meet, share knowledge, and co-ordinate the extraordinarily diverse pieces of the culture of modern microphysics - work, machines, evidence and argument.