The Android Tricorder, Introduction

Graphic by Nel-C

Australian National Science Week was between 11-19 August and to celebrate, here are seven apps - one for every day of the week - that will turn your Android smartphone into a scientific Tricorder without any extra hardware! You'll notice that I stipulate that I'm talking about an Android smartphone? This is purely because I have one myself and thus can test them out. The Apple iPhone has similar apps which can give it just as much utility! Certainly NASA think so: they have been sending iphones up into space with their astronauts since 2011!

So what is a tricorder and what does it do? The name ‘Tricorder’ comes, need I say, from the TV programme Star Trek - you can build your a papermodel of one designed by Suricata, a graphic designer on Star Trek Online. One early definition of the name was based on the three 'Device Input' lights on The Next Generation (TNG) tricorder shown in great detail in this great Star Trek Fact Files graphic.

All tricorders are by default configured to manage geological (GEO), meteorological (MET), and biological (BIO) functions. Each of these keys can be assigned to manage up to nine remote devices, providing the tricorder with a total of 27 different information sources.

Only having sensors for three categories, no matter how broad the definition, is a little confining, even when we consider that individual tricorders can be linked or 'pooled'. Another definition that is a little more open is based on Geoffrey Mandel's 'Star Fleet Medical Reference Manual', and repeated in the Star Trek TNG and Voyager Technical Manuals, saying that it is “a small sensor / computer / recorder (“TRI-function reCORDER”) with internal power source, drive, memory and logic banks”. I see this definition following the idea of the scientific method: it is a sensor, taking accurate readings, a computer, that analyses those readings, and a recorder, recording the analysis for future reference.

• We formulate a question – “Can we breath unaided on this planet?”
• We formulate a hypothesis - “To breath we need more than 19.5% oxygen in the atmosphere.”
• We make a prediction - “There is more than 19.5% oxygen in the atmosphere.”
• We test to see if our prediction is true – We pull out our tricorder and scan the atmosphere
• We analyse the results – If the graph on the tricorder shows that the oxygen level is over 19.5% then our prediction is true and there is enough oxygen to sustain human life.
• We record the results – In some cases the results might be communicated to others

...HOWEVER THEN...

• We make a new hypothesis and test this - “There is enough oxygen to sustain life but is there anything that will harm us? If there is more than certain percentages of known poisonous gases then we will die. We test for these poisonous gasses and if they are present at more than dangerous concentrations then our hypothesis will be proven

...and if it is disproven, we order the red shirt to be the first to take off his helmet, just to be sure!

Whilst they are not stressed in the cycle described above - hypothesis/prediction/test/analysis/new hypothesis – accurate measurement and recording are vital to the test and analysis stage and communication of these test results are what make peer review possible.

When we think about this in terms of a Star Trek science away mission, the team needs to have a defined survey scope, the tools required to make the necessary measurements, they need to record those measurements and have the tools to analyse them and, if necessary, communicate them to other groups or the ship!

A tricorder can't ask a question, formulate a hypothesis or make a prediction. Like any other piece of technology, it is only as effective as the person using it. What it can do is take measurements, analyse those measurements and then record and communicate them to it's users.

How is any of this of significance to “Everyman” or “Everywoman”? Because, increasingly, in our everyday life, we are being hit by the “Catch 22” messages of, “Figure it out for yourself” and “Don’t trust your own judgement, trust me!” In different situations, both of these could be correct and but both of them have immense problems.

Using the scientific method we should be able to replicate the experiments of the great scientists of the world. One of the bulwarks of peer review is that if researchers in France or India or Canada run an experiment and get a specific set of results, then researchers anywhere in the world should be able to reproduce their results if they follow the same rigorous controls.

You can’t do that with every piece of scientific research – do you have a cyclotron in your back pocket? No? Most everybody does have a reasonably modern mobile phone though and using this, you can follow up on some pretty complex – or pretty basic science.

We live in a world where science as a discipline is under attack, where we are being told by authority figures to “do the maths yourself” and then told to trust their analysis.

It’s true, we should be able to do the maths ourselves, to make observations and from those observations make an analysis that we can then test to refine our results. Most of us own an incredibly sophisticated scientific instrument that we only use for text messages and watching kitten videos!

We are all foot soldiers in the war over science, which side are you one? Both sides are saying that they want you to have faith in their observations and analysis. Science is saying, this is the evidence, test it, if you believe it is wrong, and have verifiable results to back it, tell us, we will change.

After all, it’s only logical.