by Pepper White
"Good," Dan answered. "So for that test we'll need a ring stand to hold the copper sheet, plus a current meter to see whether we can measure any current."
The show's producer entered and we gave him our list; Dan read it off the legal pad, while the camera caught him in profile.
"You'll be able to do your testing in about half an hour," he said. "Maybe now would be a good time for you to get some lunch."
"That's a good idea," I said. "Hello, room service? Three cheeseburgers and fries, please."
While we waited for the food, we chatted a little more about the machine, but then Tim suggested we needed some entertainment.
"Would you guys rather watch 'General Hospital' or 'Days of Our Lives'?"
The vote was two to one for "General Hospital."
"Tom?" Julie said on the screen. "I have to tell you something. I'm leaving you for Steve, the engineer you play golf with."
"What?" Tom answered. "But I'm an attorney at law. What could you possibly see in him?"
"It's just that he seems so ... so ... productive."
Music. Fade Out.
We finished our burgers and went in to test the machine.
Cigarette test, negative. Air currents test, negative. Lights out test, negative. Look under the table for cord and power supply test, negative. Look at bearing with magnifying glass test, inconclusive. Transistor radio test, positive! Tim scanned the machine the way Doctor McCoy scans sick people on "Star Trek," and the static made a louder buzzing noise every time the little box on the rim went past the box on the frame.
We didn't have time to set up the current meter in our fortyfive minutes with the machine. That would have to come in our second session.
We went back to our room to discuss the results of our experiments.
"We know power must be transferred between the upper boxes on the frame and the plastic boxes on the rim, but how would the boxes on the frame know when to turn on and off?" Tim asked.
"Maybe the distance between the moving disks and the fixed disks on the bottom of the machine electrically tells a sensor inside the bottom box where the wheel is in the cycle," I proposed.
"The information could be transferred to the upper box on the frame through a wire inside the frame. That wire could tell the upper frame boxes where the wheel is in its cycle. It could then turn on an electromagnet to pull the rim magnet and then reverse polarity to push the rim magnet away."
"That's fairly plausible," Tim said, "but what if the plates are doing the work? We still need to test that."
"We can do that in our next session with the machine," Dan said. "I'd like to know what's inside that lower box, though, too. Any ideas on that?"
"Maybe we can put a stethoscope real close to it without touching it," I said. "I might be able to hear whether there's any mechanical action inside the box that way. At worst, it might result in a nice profile shot of me on nationwide TV. I could send it to a talent agency."
Tim answered, "It probably won't tell you anything, but it might be worth a try. The main thing we should aim for is to get that piece of metal in between the plates. Anybody got any ideas of how to hook it up?"
"It should probably be in series with the ammeter," Dan said. "That's a little hairy, though. It's been a long time since I took sophomore physics lab."
"Yeah, it would really help if they'd picked a double E or a physics guy for the team instead of one of us. I mean we're kind of trapped by the narrowness of our fields," I said.
Dan drew a sketch of how to hook up the ammeter to the piece of copper. "I think we're ready for our second shot. What'll it be now? 'The Young and the Restless'? or 'The Edge of Night'?"
"I've been following 'The Young and the Restless,' " Tim said. "Can we watch that?"
The producer summoned us during a commercial break. Before we returned to the room for the second round of testing, Dan said, "Wait a minute. We've got to do something hacklike on our way in."
"How about whistling 'Whistle While You Work' in unison?" I suggested.
"I like that," Tim said. "Let's practice first, then walk in."
We did pretty well-the cameraman smirked slightly as we whistled past him. Nothing came of the follow-up tests. I heard nothing through the stethoscope, and the ammeter on the copper sheet on the ring stand between the lower plates told us nothing either. Dan looked like a roulette dealer in Las Vegas as he stood next to the machine. The pile of test equipment in the comer of the room did tell us something, though.
Oscilloscopes, many big electronicky-looking boxes. Holy home court advantage, Batman. The Berkeley dweebs probably had the whole physics and electrical engineering department technical supply staff on full alert for the day. And since this was the physics department made famous by Oppie (J. Robert Oppenheimer, A-bomb developer), their access to sophisticated nonintrusive diagnostic tools was far greater than ours. Maybe we should have come to Berkeley earlier and cut some deals with technicians.
Back at our room Berkeley had taped a happy smiley face to our door. How declasse, we agreed. We taped a frowny face to their door.
"So what are we going to say, guys, and who's going to say it?" Dan asked.
"Tim's the smart one. He should do it," I said. "Dan, you and I've both worn red so we've gotten our fifteen seconds of fame."
"Are you willing, Tim?" Dan asked.
"Sure, why not. Let's figure out what we're going to say," Tim said matter-of-factly. He had professor potential.
I said, "Let's make a list of what we know for sure. That's what Nick the technician in my lab has always told me to do when I'm stuck on a mechanical problem in my thesis work."
"OK," Tim said. Dan wrote the list as we talked through it.
1. Upper boxes on frames have energy transfer, proved by transistor radio test.
2. Air currents in room aren't doing anything, as proved by ice/hairdryer test.
3. Fake photocells on upper boxes aren't doing anything, as proved by lights-out test.
4. Air jet tubes are just a ruse, as proved by cigarette test.
5. All power has to be self-contained in machine in batteries somewhere, as proved by look under table for plug test.
6. No major noise comes out of the lower box, as proved by stethoscope test.
7. No large current is being conveyed to and from plates, as proved by copper test.
When we finished our list, Tim said, "So we know the energy's going from the boxes on the rim to the boxes on the frame. We're still stuck, though, on how the boxes on the frame know how to turn on and off themselves at the right time to pull the wheel around. I mean, if he messed it up, the box on the frame could pull the box on the rim when it's supposed to push it and push it when it's supposed to pull it, and the thing wouldn't keep going."
"That might be what was happening this morning when it wouldn't start," I offered. "I still think it might be synchronized with the pistons below. There's a set ratio between the number of times the plates go up and down per revolution and the number of times the plastic boxes on the rim go by the boxes on the frame. Maybe there's a circuit inside the box that takes a pulse from the motion of the plates and tells the electromagnet when to turn on and off. There could be wires inside the machine that convey that information electronically."
"Sounds good to me," Tim said.
"Me, too," Dan said.
The producer knocked on the door. The three of us returned to the room and Tim presented the explanation, while Dan and I looked keen and alert for the camera as we sat in the background. Then we went out of the room and passed the Berkeley guys on their way in. The MIT undergrad physics major led the way, with a cocky, arrogant grin on his face. Team MIT was in trouble. Berkeley had put the frowny face back on our door.
Midway through "The Match Game," the producer came back to have us sit down and listen to Dr. David Jones's judgment on who had the better explanation of how the thing worked. I had that feeling in my stomach and my chest again, that hollow feeling you get whe
n you're waiting to find out how you did on a test, what your SAT scores were, which colleges accepted you.
"Both of the teams have shown that this is not a perpetual motion machine. While both teams located the primary means of propulsion in the magnets in the plastic boxes on the rim and the electromagnets on the frame, the Berkeley team more correctly explained how the machine works, because they correctly isolated the entire control to a pulsed electromagnet contained in the box on the frame. The MIT team incorrectly implicated the rods attached to the side of the wheel, as some kind of 'control' mechanism."
Dr. Jones removed the boxes from the frame and opened one for the camera. "As you can see, there is a small battery inside, and some simple electronic circuitry to provide the timing for the electromagnet to turn on and off."
Dam. Sorry guys. Sorry MIT. If only one of us knew some electronics. I really should take a class or two in that; it's the wave of the present.
Dr. Jones continued. "You notice, however, that once I've taken off the electromagnet boxes, the machine is still turning. You see, there is a separate propulsive mechanism that neither team addressed in their explanation." He smirked the same arrogant, cocky smirk that the physics guy from Berkeley smirked. The studio audience laughed dutifully for the camera. We dutifully shook hands with the winner and his colleagues and the inventor of the machine.
Afterward Dan and I sat in the Jacuzzi by the pool at the hotel. Tim dropped by and sat in the poolside lounge chair. Room service brought the refreshments-we were still on expense account.
"You know, we've really let the institute down; I mean, I feel really bad about it," I said.
"Yeah, me too," Dan said. "Could you pass the caviar?"
"We were close," Tim said. "Damn close. It's too bad Pepper and I took controls so recently; if we hadn't, maybe we wouldn't have tried to find a controller in the machine. And you know what else, when we tried to identify the work the plates were doing, I think we were on the right track for the other method of propulsion. I think it was some kind of capacitive device, where the electric polarity went positive and negative, so that at one point in the cycle it was pulling the plate toward it, while it was pushing the other plate away from it. We caught that; if only we knew more about electricity and electrical testing we could have proven it."
"Yeah," Dan said. "The thing that gets me, though, is that the only guy from their team who had any brains, who did any of the talking, was that astrophysics guy. The other guys seemed to be just going along for the ride."
Tim added, "And he did his undergraduate work at MIT. No wonder he was so good."
"Yeah," I said. "Three MIT engineers versus one MIT physicist. Forget Berkeley; it wasn't a fair contest."
C H A P T E R
15
Hackito Ergo Sum
Schedule:
Spring '83: 2.01 Mechanics of Solids (Hill)
2.94 Dynamics of Solids (Lincoln)
2.996 Thesis
February 14
Professor Hill solemnly stood before the solid mechanics class. There was an empty desk in the row behind me. "I've got some very sad news for you. One of your classmates took his own life yesterday."
I wanted to cry right then and there, but I suppressed it along with all the nineteen- and twenty-year-olds in the class. Why did he do it? What is it about this place that breeds the feeling of hopelessness, loneliness, and inadequacy that could push anyone over the edge? I remembered the Steve Watson experience; he was really smart and he still felt worthless. I remembered Eddy the janitor telling me to take it easy that first term, to have fun now and then so he wouldn't have to call the campus police to cut the sheet or the rope or the belt and issue mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
Professor Hill was a kind and gentle man, who patiently an swered my questions whenever I went to his office for help. He continued the sad prelude to the lecture. "Please. If you're unhappy, don't let it go that far. Come and talk to me, or talk to your hall tutor, or to "Nightline," or to a religious counselor, or to the psychiatric department, or to a friend if you have one. And don't forget one option that you have. You can leave the institute. It's not the only good engineering school in the world. In fact, if you go somewhere else where the professors aren't under such pressure to produce research funding you might receive a better education. Please talk to me if you need any help along these lines."
I enrolled in Professor Hill's class, a.k.a. Statics, and Professor Lincoln's undergraduate Dynamics class, two nine four. Statics is beams and trusses and bridges and things like that. Dynamics is beams and trusses and bridges that move, that rock back and forth in the wind. Dynamics is also lathes and robot arms and missile trajectories.
After two seventy I knew that A's were attainable in head to head competition with the undergrads. I figured the two courses would add two more A's to my transcript. And the classes would be my review for the mechanics section of the doctoral qualifying exams. At MIT you have to look for ways to MIRV things, to kill multiple birds with one stone.
March 10
In the cell. Chet and I prepared for the RCM firing at high pressure with the new starting mechanism.
"And I want you to mount the fuel injector, too," he said. "We may not be able to make a movie yet, but if we combust fuel we'll have some data to show the consortium."
"But, Chet, what if something goes wrong with the experiment? Why don't we leave the fuel injector off and I'll close the cylinder with a piece of Plexiglas? It's got the 0-rings in it already and everything," I countered. "If everything goes well, we can do a second firing with the injector in place."
"I think it's a waste of time to do that, but if you insist, we can do that."
My pulse rate didn't rise quite as high as it had on previous firings. The pressure buildup was predictable; I knew at what pressures the clunks of the metal adjusting itself would occur.
BOOOM.
Hisssss. I dumped the pressure from the tank after the successful firing. I breathed regularly again. Chet and I went to the front of the machine, and Professor Heywood opened the door to the cell to see how the test went.
The window we put in at my insistence, without the fuel injector, was shattered. The piston, driven by the higher pressure and the higher force and the higher momentum, had obeyed not Chet's computer model, but Newton's and Murphy's laws. The piston's intended destination was about an inch short of the window; its actual destination was halfway through the window. Had the fuel injector been in place it would have been destroyed.
"I guess you were right on that one," Chet said to me.
"This will set us back a bit," Professor Heywood said. "We can fix the equipment. I'm glad both of you are all right. Mizugachi at the Hiroshima Institute of Technology lost two graduate students last year when their RCM exploded."
"Lost, Professor?" I asked.
"Half the building went with them."
Thank you for sharing that with me, Professor.
April 4, 1983
Fifteen years ago today, in Memphis, James Earl Ray located the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., in the cross hairs of the scope of his high-powered rifle and pulled the trigger. Fifteen years ago today, Professor Lincoln sat in my desk and was twenty-five like me. Fifteen years ago today he was more of a minority than he is now, as he received A after A and started on the path to tenure. He had a dream.
Professor Lincoln stood at the front of the room on the table on the lecture platform slightly above floor level. His suits qualified him to be one of Playboy magazine's twelve best-dressed men of 1980. His consulting fees netted him not one but two white Jaguar 12-cylinder XJ6 four-doors with full leather interiors and Bose ('5 1) speakers.
He finished the topic of the previous lecture. "And so resonance occurs when the frequency of energy input into a system is the same as the frequency that the system would rock back and forth if you gave it one push. See, it's sort of like when you were a child on a swing set."
He sketched a swing set with s
ome Greek letters next to it.
He continued, "Now you as a child on the swing set were a pendulum. Your mother or father was a forcing function. If they held you up and let you swing without pushing, you would swing back and forth once every four seconds or so. That's your natural frequency, or what some people call your resonant frequency, once per four seconds. Now as a child you knew that the fun part of being on the swing set was to swing higher and higher. And the way that happened was that Mommy or Daddy gave you a push every four seconds or so, and the energy they input into you was in the right direction at the right time at the right speed to make you go higher and higher.
"In engineering, your problem will usually be to avoid these resonant frequencies. For example, if you were a bridge, and the wind made the air pressure on you vary at a resonant frequency, you'd soon shake apart. That's happened several times in the past century or two. On the other hand, if you become a musical instrument designer, your task will be to design systems that always resonate. But that's enough on resonance. Y'all put down your pencils, OK? For the rest of the lecture I'm not going to talk about dynamics."
The rest of the class put away their notebooks and pads. Lincoln assumed a different character.
"Y'see, Ah nevah wint tah college. Everuh day, before Ah come in tuh lecture y'all, the seenyuh white faculty, dey sets me down, and dey briefs me foe six houwuhs befoe ah comes out to talks to y'all."
There was a chuckle or two, and sort of a tense air in the class of eighty minus the one who left Professor Hill's class and the institute and Earth in February.
"But seriously, though," he continued. "MIT is a racist, sexist institution. You may ask yourselves, 'Why shouldn't it be; so is every other institution in this country, that means in the world,' but that's not the point. You are here now, and I want to give you some examples of the point I'm trying to make."