Doctor Who: 15 Science Lessons To Build Your Own Sonic Screwdriver

4-Scanning

3a Scan 3 Spectroscopy The Three Doctors

Scanning can also involve determining the actual physical or chemical makeup of a substance, something that Acoustic Microscopy doesn't do. For that type of scanning you would use Acoustic Spectroscopy. The first two examples are in The Three Doctors when the Third Doctor scanned a field, and later his sink, for traces of antimatter. he wasn't scanning an actual object, only the traces left over. The best know biological scanning was in The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances when the Ninth Doctor scanned the hospital patients to determine whether the gas masks were actually a part of them. In The Lazarus Experiment The Tenth Doctor scanned the area for Lazarus' DNA signature which enabled him to pick up traces of DNA and hone in on where Professor Lazarus was. The Eleventh Doctor, on the other hand, scans everything... This is a more analytic type of scanning called Acoustic Spectroscopy that in today's science is limited to the properties of fluids and dispersed particles. But as with all sciences, advances could someday make it possible to analyze solid objects or even gases. It works by determining the particle size, and distribution of those particles which enables it to identify the material(s) that compose an object. With time, this science could be expanded to reveal the object's entire chemical and physical nature.
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Contributor

An artist and a computer geek before the two became synonymous. Combined them into data visualization which just seemed natural. But my real passion is Doctor Who. I write for the magazine Whotopia with my colleague Jürgen. Presented on my blog, The Doctor and Me, are essays and data analysis of Doctor Who. Working to amass large Doctor Who datasets allows for the analysis of the show unlike anything else. The most recent dataset is every use of the sonic screwdriver which is currently approaching 900. And every time an old episode comes on, there is a chance of spotting yet one more use that was tucked away.