SPINLAB @ MSU

This collection of information was on an internal facing wiki page for the group, but I was recently asked to share it with the outside world. There is very little original information here but this post does in one place collect useful insights from others who are much more experienced and smarter than me. -JTS

Purpose of Logbook

• Responsible Conduct of Research – required by our NSF Grant Contract
• A record of what happened under what conditions and a guess as to why
• A tool for thinking: writing as a way to clarifying & articulating your thought process
• Our first defense against accusations of scientific fraud
• The final word in clarifying effort in the unlikely case there is any ambiguity i.e. if you didn’t write it down, then it didn’t happen
• Part of the minimal requirement of doing your job as a Scientist

Types of Logbooks

• Archival/Personal logbooks: Bookfactory
• Equipment/Lab logbooks: Ampad 22-157
• Electronic Logbook: https://elog.psi.ch/elog/

General Contents of Logbooks

• A record of experimental conditions and apparatus
• A record of the experimenter’s real time observations, actions, and thought process
• Notes from meetings and discussions
• Descriptive commentary – just the facts
  • What happened?
  • When did it happen?
  • What did I do?
• Reflective commentary – an articulation of your thought process
  • Why did it happen?
  • What did I do that?
  • What did I think will happen?
  • What went well?
  • What should be improved for next time?

Specific Contents of Logbooks

• Leave first couple of sheets blank for table of contents. This helps you find info later.
• Write down date and time. This helps you figure out when things happened and how long they took.
• Write down a record of what you’ve down while you’re doing it.
• Write down your goal for the day.
• Write down what you expect to see and whether your guess was correct.
• Write down summary findings and proposed next steps.
• Write down equipment model numbers and serial numbers.
• Paste useful manual pages directly into logbook.
• Paste equipment specifications directly into logbook.
• Paste interesting plots directly into logbook.
• Make sketch of experimental setup.
• Write down equipment operating settings.
• Write down equipment readings when things are working properly for future reference.
• Write down status of equipment before leaving lab.
• Write down daily summary including next steps.
• Write down contact info to vendors, especially useful technical supports people.
• Write down notes from meetings including next steps.

Electronic Logbook

• Weekly Summary – due by 2359 every Saturday
• Monthly Summary – due by 2359 of the last Saturday of the month
• Write down steps for useful procedures.

Equipment

• Read the manual, particularly theory of operating and sources of common errors.
• Label equipment with “Stolen from Spinlab” label.
• Catalog equipment model number, serial number, and maintenance info on group wiki.
• If something is broken, then report it ASAP so that we can get it diagnosed/repaired sooner than later.

Time Management

• Start early on long lead time items.
• Refer to logbook entries to see how long tasks really take.
• Stop work 30 minutes before you want to leave so you have time to
  • summarize work in logbook
  • safely turn off equipment
  • clean up and organize your work space of the next day or for the next person
• Plan your work.
• Send useful (indicate what action the recipient is supposed to take and indicate a desired delivery date or an estimate for a completion date) and professional (acknowledge their help and professional status) emails.

Aphorisms

• “Amateurs remember, professionals write it down.” – ERTS
• Read & struggle on your own first, make a list of questions, then ask questions.
• Our primary obligation as scientists is to perform & report our work honestly. Being correct is just icing on the cake.
• When drawing a conclusion, one must explicitly state all assumptions and thoroughly discuss the alternatives fairly.
• Good enough is better than perfect.
• You will not succeed at first, so plan on trying again.
• Correlation is not causation.
• Measure twice, cut once.
• Read the manual.
• When you have to eat three frogs, start with the biggest one first.
• Writing is Thinking.

Research Culture

• Make a little bit of progress every day: (1.01)²³² = 10
• Perform the experiment many times improving it incrementally each time
• Read a paper every two weeks on average (or monthly if an undergrad)
• Go to a seminar/talk about twice a week (or monthly if an undergrad)
• Choose and learn a new skill or about a new topic every month
• Work on a couple of different projects and alternate between the two
• Actively seek feedback and constructive criticism
• Try to work on what you have an interest in
• Plan the work before performing the work to make sure it is relevant and done safely
• Perform daily, weekly, and monthly reviews of the work
• Request the resources you need from JTS in order to perform the work successfully
• Make your work visible
• If you didn’t write it down, it didn’t happen
• Prime Directive of the Knob-Turner: The knob-turner must stare at the correct needle when turning the knob.
• The VOLVO Rule: When troubleshooting, turn only ONE knob at a time.
• “Round Black Knob” is never a good name for a knob.
• Develop a ”Growth Mindset”
• Learn to handle ”Impostor Syndrome”

References

How to Solve it by George Pólya (note that actually doing the problem is only 25% of the job!)

1. Understand the problem – “You have to understand the problem.”
2. Devise a plan – “Find the connection between the data and the unknown.”
3. Carry out the plan and “check each step. Can you see clearly see that the step is correct?”
4. Look back – an application of Kaizen or continuous improvement – “Examine the solution obtained.” Is it correct (check units) and can the solution be generalized in some way?

Watch this amazing video of Polya’s method in action – I aspire to guide a class like this one day!

Kristen’s Guide to Success in Spinlab by Kristen Parzuchowski (Spinlab Alumna 2015-2017)

ON BEING A SUCCESSFUL GRADUATE STUDENT IN THE SCIENCES by John N. Thompson

The importance of stupidity in scientific research by Martin A. Schwartz (Journal of Cell Science 2008 121: 1771)

Spencer Hall’s Resources for Graduate Students and Post-Docs by Spencer Hall

Randy Pausch (I was in the audience for his Time Management lecture below at UVa in November 2007.)

Experimental Modeling Framework by The Lewandowksi Group @ Colorado-Boulder

Cargo Cult Science (1974 Caltech Commencement)

What is Problem Solving by Michael E. Martinez (The Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 79, No. 8 (Apr., 1998), pp. 605-609)

How To Think by Ed Boyden (MIT Technology Review November 13, 2007)

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn by R. W. Hamming (series of lectures delivered to graduate students at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey):

“You and Your Research” by R. W. Hamming (text version of similar talk given in 1986)

Creative Thinking – March 20, 1952 by Claude Shannon

EWD 637 – The Three Golden Rules for Successful Scientific Research by Edsger W. Dijkstra

• Rule 1: “Raise your quality standards as high as you can live with, avoid wasting your time on routine problems, and always try to work as closely as possible at the boundary of your abilities. Do this, because it is the only way of discovering how that boundary should be moved forward.”
• Rule 2: “We all like our work to be socially relevant and scientifically sound. If we can find a topic satisfying both desires, we are lucky; if the two targets are in conflict with each other, let the requirement of scientific soundness prevail.”
• Rule 3: “Never tackle a problem of which you can be pretty sure that (now or in the near future) it will be tackled by others who are, in relation to that problem, at least as competent and well-equipped as you.”

Barking up the Wrong Tree by Eric Barker (pretty much any post is good)

Four golden lessons by Steven Weinberg

• Lesson 1: “…no one knows everything, and you don’t have to.” -> You can learn what you need to learn in the course of your research.
• Lesson 2: “…go for the messes — that’s where the action is.” -> Working on challenging research problems during one’s scientific career can be very rewarding.
• Lesson 3: “…forgive yourself for wasting time.” -> Nothing is really a waste of time so long as you learn from the experience and store the hard-won knowledge away for future use in perhaps a different context. (compare to Polya’s step 4 “Looking back” on How to Solve It)
• Lesson 4: “…learn something about the history of science, or at a minimum the history of your own branch of science.” -> The intellectual development of your sub-field provides context that, among other things, makes it much easier to write the introduction, motivation, and background sections of papers and dissertations.

Austin’s Butterfly by Ron Berger (a beautiful real life example of Weinberg’s lesson 3, Polya’s step 4 Looking Back, Kaizen, and continuous improvement) and see this video to watch it in action with kids.

Growth Mindset by Carol Dweck and see this video below:

Become more lucky by Max Gunther from his book The Luck Factor:

1. “The Spiderweb Structure” – the luckiest people are those who have “taken the trouble to form a great many friendly contacts with other people.”
2. “The Hunching Skill” – Lucky people have the ability to both generate and trust their hunches: “a piece of “mind stuff” that feels something like knowledge but doesn’t feel perfectly trustworthy.”
3. “The “Audentes Fortuna Juvat” Phenomenon” – “Fortune favors the bold.” but “Know the Difference Between Boldness and Rashness.”
4. “The Ratchet Effect” – “know how to discard back luck before it becomes worse luck.”
5. “The Pessimism Paradox” – “Lucky people are those who adapt to uncertainty. They accept disorder as a fact that must be dealt with, whether one likes it or not.”

The scan below is from the amazing collection of handwritten notes from John Wheeler‘s graduate electromagnetism course at Texas in 1976-1977 made available by Tony Rothman (who was a theory postdoc with YaB in the early 1980’s). I’ll note with great interest but without further comment that Wheeler thought it was important to teach his students more than just the course material.