WordNet
n. an instrument used by scientists
Wikipedia
A scientific instrument is an instrument used for scientific purposes. Most are measurement instruments. They may be specifically designed, constructed and refined for the purpose. Over time, instruments have become more accurate and precise.
Scientific instruments are part of laboratory equipment, but are considered more sophisticated and more specialized than other measuring instruments as scales, meter sticks, chronometers, thermometers or even waveform generators. They are increasingly based upon the integration of computers to improve and simplify control, enhance and extend instrumental functions, conditions, parameter adjustments and data sampling, collection, resolution, analysis (both during and post-process), storage and retrieval.
Individual instruments can also be connected as a local area network (LAN) and can be further integrated as part of a laboratory information management system (LIMS). This can give Internet access to databases of physical properties, for example a peptide spectral library allowing results comparisons and advanced data analysis. Developers have used open source principles borrowed from the software industry to rapidly improve low-cost open-source hardware for scientific measurements and to create open source labs. Now with the advent of low-cost 3-D printing scientists can manufacture much of their own components. The 3-D printers themselves can even be modified themselves to function as research tools (e.g. fluid handling).
Some scientific instruments can be quite large in size, like particle colliders or radio-telescope antennas and antenna arrays that are miles or kilometers wide. The converse or nanoscale also has been applied, with much of the activity centered on nanomedicine, particularly as non-invasive medical imaging has exploded on the diagnostic arts and minimally invasive surgery and surgical robotics have come into use. Instruments on the scale of a single molecule may soon interact with our bodies at the cellular and biochemical level to collect diagnostic information and provide accurate drug delivery mechanisms.
Scientific instruments can be found on board sounding rockets, satellites or planetary rovers and controlled by radio telecommunication.
Usage examples of "scientific instrument".
Else I have a third-rate brain, not the scientific instrument I've prided myself on.
They were both in the height of fashion, one wearing a radio-dresslet whose surface pattern formed a printed circuit so that by shifting her buckled belt to right or left she could have her choice of broadcasts fed into the earpiece nestling under her purple hair, the other in a skintight fabric as harshly metallic as the case of a scientific instrument Both had chromed nails, like the power terminals of a machine.
Horvath's people insisted on carrying nearly every scientific instrument used in their specialties on the chance that it might be useful.
They had been commandeered from various local radio and scientific instrument works, and every man knew his stuff so well that Laurie and his little band could concentrate unhampered on their own special jobs.
They are interested in a child, a girl, who has an unusual piece of equipment-an antique scientific instrument, certainly stolen, which should be in safer hands than hers.
As mentioned earlier, the calendar is a precise scientific instrument that utilizes advanced principles of astronomy and mathematics to derive its calculations.
Their attention is withdrawn totally into their own mind and there, in its formative substratum, they come face to face with the mental record of their life's journey, as faithfully and unemotionally recorded as in any scientific instrument.
But no matter in what direction they turned their subtle scientific instrument—.
Anthony passed the scientific instrument up between the front seats, gently nudging Uhura’.
Benjamin Franklins house had been pillaged, and his scientific instrument collection, as well as a portion of his personal library, had been carried away by John Andre.
The total was sixty watches and eight cats, also some oddments from the small stock of a local scientific instrument maker.