Physics has always been a do-it-yourself endeavor.
In this TED- Ed video, Adam Savage describes how simple experimental concepts led to breakthroughs in our understanding of the natural world.
The use, for example, of a toothed wheel to test how fast light traveled was ingenious. No less impressive is the startling adduction drawn from the shadow cast by the sun simultaneously in a deep and narrow well and past a vertical stake driven in the ground many miles away. As Savage points out, the "simplest questions can lead one to the edge of human knowledge."
The video brilliantly illustrates that point. Stay curious.
Wayne