Things One Should Never Do or Why You Should Keep Track of Your Kids
Being a dauntless inventor has it's minor hazards. A few of these are described below. These are included mainly for humor, and nobody should ever emulate or attempt to do any of them!
How not to make a magnet.
I attempted my first real physics experiment when I was about seven years old. We lived in Aden, in what is now Yemen, at that time. As is the case in most places outside the USA, the power in the wall sockets there was 220 volts. Now I had just discovered magnetism and was completely fascinated by it. I wanted a magnet of my own. I had gotten a vague impression that magnetism and electricity had something to do with each other, and from this I drew the conclusion that if I bent a paper clip into a U shape and plugged it into the wall it would become a magnet. I carefully prepared my paper clip and crouched down in front of the wall outlet to get a good view of this miraculous transformation. Then I plugged it in. To my complete surprise, it turned instantly white hot and vaporized right in my hand. I found I had two white chalky grooves in my finger and thumb. But worst of all, no magnet. I drew the conclusion that my theory of electromagnetism must be flawed! My parents were quite unreasonable about the whole thing, telling me in emphatic terms that I might have been electrocuted.
Never walk backwards on a roof.
During that same time, I was the youngest member of the group. There weren't many English speaking children there. I joined a game of "follow the leader" and being the youngest was the last in the line. The game went up a steel ladder on the wall of a flat topped building about fifteen feet high. When I reached the top I saw the girl in front of me run across the roof and hop over a low hanging telephone wire. Well, it was low for her, but I was a short legged little thing. Determined not to fail, I backed up for a run at it. I noticed a strange feeling of weightlessness and then a sudden jarring sensation. I couldn't breathe and I felt awful. Then I realized I had fallen flat on my back at the base of the wall. I crawled up the back stairs to the Consulate, croaking like a frog for air. The cook about had a heart attack and called my parents. This adventure got me a broken collar bone, and abdominal exploratory operation looking for internal hemorrhaging, and a week's vacation in the Royal Air Force hospital. From this experience I developed a lifelong adage. "Never walk backwards on a roof".
Things not to do at summer camp.
A few years later I was back in the States and I went to summer camp. No sooner did I arrive than I began hearing about baseball. Now I had never heard of baseball, as I had been overseas in a British community. We played cricket there. But it was obvious that baseball was a big deal in America, so I didn't let on about my ignorance and determined that I'd figure it out by watching. So at the first opportunity to watch this mysterious sport, I placed myself right behind the batter. I crouched down like the catcher and waited for the pitch. The batter took a mighty swing and hit me solidly on the forehead. I still to this day have a spot on my forehead that won't wrinkle because there's a bone reinforcement under it. Well, I stood up and promptly passed out. When I awoke, it hurt like hell and there were all kinds of people around me yelling and waving their arms. Naturally I was shipped home, and arrived with black eyes down to my chin and a big purple knot on my forehead.
The next year I went back to the same summer camp. Everything was going well until a big sudden summer thunderstorm came up while we were all in the dining hall. But I, being the type of person I am, was prepared! I had a little folding plastic raincoat in a little pouch on my belt. I whipped this piece of equipment out and put it on. Don't worry, I shouted, I'll get everyone's raincoat. With this I dashed out into the storm. I made it all the way to our cabin and stopped breathless in the doorway, dripping wet and barefoot. There was a counselor there, standing up on a bunk stuffing shavings of soap into a leak in the ceiling. "I've come to get the raincoats!" I shouted. At that instant I heard the loudest noise I ever heard before or since, a terrific bang. I felt as if the bang had instantly lifted me about a foot off the ground. Slowly I seemed to settle back to earth, and then the floor came up like one of those folding beds and hit me in the face. According to the counselor, lightning hit the peak of the cabin roof just above us and came down an electrical conduit to a switch box just inside the door. An electric arc which he said was as thick as his wrist connected me with the switch box and I lit up with a corona discharge (a blue glowing cloud of electrons that have nowhere to go) a foot deep which then collapsed back onto my body. Then I fell flat on my face. When I sorted out where I was I found that the whole left side of my body was paralyzed. The lightning had hit the back of my right shoulder and there was a crow's foot shaped burn there. They bundled me up and drove at breakneck speed to a hospital. On the way there I began to feel a tingling in my fingertips. By the time we arrived the paralysis was mostly gone. For a second time I was returned home early, this time with a note saying, "Don't send this kid back here."
Notable fireballs.
I have had some surprising experiences with fire in my life. One I recall happened when I was about nine years old. We had what were called carbide cannons in those days. These were hollow cast iron cannons with a kind of water tank in the bottom. They came with a toothpaste kind of tube full of powdered calcium carbide. You put a little water in the tank and then scooped a measure of the calcium carbide from the tube with a twist out plug at the back of the cannon that had a little scoop on it. When you twisted the plug back in the carbide got dumped into the water. When calcium carbide hits water it fizzes up and releases acetylene gas, the gas that welding torches use. Next you pushed in a plunger built into the plug which made a spark by means of a cigarette lighter flint. This ignited the mixture of acetylene and air inside the cannon and made a loud bang. All very good. But, one of my tubes of calcium carbide sprung a leak from the metal of the tube being bent the wrong way and cracking. Calcium carbide will take up moisture from the air, and so my precious carbide was going to spoil. What to do? I decided that I might as well burn it all up at once, so we got a metal trash can and put water in the bottom. Then we all crowded around and I ripped the tube open and dumped the carbide in. It hissed and foamed like crazy, and I began fumbling for a match. When I finally got the match struck and threw it into the barrel, an unexpected thing happened. A huge orange fireball rose out of the barrel with a whoosh and singed all our eyebrows off. It rose and rose, making a huge cloud of black smoke with the orange fire raging and boiling inside it. It was really spectacular. When it ended we all looked at each other and discovered that we looked like coal miners. We never did that again.
The next big fireball in my life came when I was thirteen and living in Baghdad. In Baghdad the houses had no central heat. (It's normally a hot climate.) But in the middle of winter it can get a bit chilly, so all the houses have fireplaces. Now there are no trees anywhere near Baghdad, so for firewood we used teak railroad ties taken up from an old railway. These were cut in short lengths to fit in the fireplace. The standard way to set a fire was to put the railroad ties in the fireplace and pour kerosene over them. Then you lit the kerosene, and the fire gained slowly until it was going nicely. One night I was home alone, and I was bored. It was cold enough, so I decided to light a fire. Unfortunately, I didn't put enough kerosene on the wood, and it burned for a time and then went out. More kerosene! Well, normally the fireplace is cold when you put the kerosene on, but now it was hot. I dashed a pint of kerosene over the smoldering logs and to my surprise, it hissed and a dense white smoke came boiling off it. Oops, better get a match in there fast. But again, a slight delay fumbling with the match during which the chimney filled with a mixture of kerosene fumes and air. Bravely I threw in the match. I ducked, knowing that things might not go as expected. Sure enough, another orange fireball came rolling out of the fireplace and rose up to the ceiling. Fortunately the house was all concrete and nothing burned. The black ceiling, however, was noticed the next day.
How to dim the lights at a diplomatic garden party.
In Baghdad, I began learning about metalworking as best I could with what I could get my hands on. I discovered lead. Lead was ideal, because you could melt it on the stove and pour it into shapes. I did a lot of experiments with lead, and discovered that if I poured it onto the concrete floor it solidified in nice plates. I found I could cut these plates with a big pair of scissors, but how to join them together. By that time I had a much better understanding of electricity. I knew that real metalworkers used an electric arc to weld steel. I concluded it would work with lead too. So I set up an arc welder in my bedroom. I cut open a flashlight battery and extracted the carbon rod from the center. (In those days, flashlight batteries were all zinc carbon.) Then I made a salt water resistor with a jar and a couple of nails with wires twisted to them. One end went into the 220 volt wall outlet. The other attached to the carbon rod and the lead to be welded. For eye protection I smoked a piece of glass with a candle. And so I started welding. It worked reasonably well, except it made a lot of this strange white smoke. (I didn't know at the time that this was poisonous lead oxide.) The other strange thing was that the water in the jar boiled violently and actually had sparks in it underwater. I had been welding along for a time when my father appeared at my door. My parents had a garden party going on with all manner of diplomatic dignitaries attending. "What are you doing?" my father asked. "I'm welding lead," I replied proudly. "Well cut it out, you're dimming the lights in the garden," he said, and then he disappeared. Today I know that although the water resistor reduced the voltage when the current was flowing, when it wasn't flowing I was holding a live 220 volt wire in my hand. If I had touched the lead with my other hand I'd likely have been electrocuted. Also, I was breathing this highly poisonous smoke. Also, a smoked glass just reduces the light coming through, it doesn't filter out harmful ultraviolet or infrared. I don't know what if anything they had for fuses in Baghdad, because I must have been drawing a hundred amps out of a wall socket.
How to get fired from your first job.
By the time I was seventeen, I was a bit more informed and had fewer surprises from the physical world. But the social world was a mystery to me. I had grown up in a highly variable world. Most of the time I had been overseas in a household where there were employees who did everything. The Government paid for it so my parents could entertain dignitaries in the style that was expected. For me it meant that I didn't even know how to make a bed. When I graduated from high school I went out to California. There I tried to fend for myself. I got my first job at a gas station with an oil company whose attendants wore starched white uniforms with little white fore and aft caps like the military wears. You got five uniforms and you wore a clean one every day. On the last day of the week, you turned them in to be washed and starched for the next week. Well, naturally I forgot to turn in my uniforms. So, knowing nothing at all about laundry, I decided to wash them myself. Imagine my surprise when they came out of the washer bright pink! I had forgotten to take the red mechanic's rags out of the pockets. Ironing was something I didn't even know existed, so by the time my uniforms came out of the dryer they were all wrinkly and of course girlie pink. Undaunted, I appeared for work Monday morning. My boss, who I felt took things too seriously, turned bright pink himself. "You're a disgrace to the company!" he yelled. "You're fired!"
These are a few of the more memorable foolish things I did when I was young. I was just curious, I didn't mean
any harm. Do you know what your kids are doing?