One of the important books in the middle part of my
life was entitled All I Really Need to Know I learned in
Kindergarten (Robert Fulghum).
I have read it several times and learned much with each perusal. In fact, one of his truisms sort of guided my
life, especially in my youth: It wasn’t
in books. It wasn’t in a church. What I needed to know was out there in the
world. So, from a very young age I
was out in the world looking, engaging and learning.
Growing up in a small town in Kansas in the 1950’s
was a pretty amazing experience---there I said it. Most readers probably now believe that
senility has really fogged my mind, but let me explain. Television was almost non-existent, one or
two black and white channels came later, and the closest things to video games
were the pin ball machines in the local pool hall. However, machines cost 5 cents per play and
who wanted to waste a nickel? So, kids
needed to invent projects and games and pick up rocks and collect leaves and
study insects and therefore my fascination for science and nature began-- What I needed to know was out there in the
world.
I grew up in a very non-wealthy family---certainly
poor by today’s standards but not unlike 95% of the other families in town (400
people maybe counting some dogs). Therefore,
my purchased toys were often of the least expensive variety. For example, I wanted a metal “erector set”
but received wooden “tinkertoys.” I
never did receive an electric train that ran circles on a small track nor a “chemistry
set.” Therefore I went out into the
world and improvised. One of my favorite
“toys” was the generator/magneto secured from the old crank telephones. Today these old wooden phones are found in
antique shops and are fairly expensive.
“Back then” I simply looked behind the telephone office and pulled out a
generator/magneto from a discarded phone.
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Western Electric Five Bar Magneto. Photo courtesy of the Old Phone Man who has an absolutely
wonderful web site located at www.oldphoneman.com.
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These generator/magnetos had a permanent set of
horseshoe magnets (usually 2-5) and produced alternating (AC) current when the
crank was rotated. The faster I cranked,
the higher the volts produced. One could
get a hundred volts or so by really “cranking her up”!
In the actual telephones the hand cranked
generators/magnetos caused the bell to ring.
With the addition of fairly large zinc-carbon batteries a signal was
transmitted to the local telephone office (Central) and an operator answered
and then connected you, via switchboard, to another number. I still remember our home phone
number—119—and my father’s place of business—33. So, I cranked the phone and Bertha the
operator answered “Central.” I said
“Bertha, what is the temperature today?”
She imparts that information and then I stated, “Give me 33 please” and
I am connected to my father’s phone.
But, there were other kid uses for the
generator/magnetos. These gadgets were
powerful little things and could impart a painful shock so one had to be
careful. My favorite use was attaching
wires to the positive and negative terminals and then clamping these wires to slender
steel rods. I inserted the rods into a
damp area of soil a few feet apart and gave her a crank. Like magic, earthworms (fishing worms)
appeared on the surface available for scooping up and using for bait.
Another exercise involved using the same device to
fish for denizens residing in the local Saline River. By tossing the rods into the water and
cranking up a shock the fish were stunned and came to the surface and one could
net them. Now, this was not a legal
means of obtaining fish in Kansas and I am not claiming responsibility.
I also used the generator/magnetos to power a small
light bulb. This was nothing spectacular
but when sticking the light bulb next to a neighbor’s window and cranking away,
nifty results were often achieved---and we ran like crap for home. Once I attached the wires to fences around
the local baseball field and waited for unsuspecting victims---but only gently
cranking for a mild shock. It was a
great way to learn about electricity “on the cheap” and certainly whetted my curiosity for science.
I also loved to fool around with DC power and
collected the old zinc-carbon batteries from telephones and from lanterns used,
and discarded, by the local railroad work crew.
These batteries still had some juice left and were used for a couple of
projects. One was simple and involved
powering flashlight bulbs in small wooden houses we built to make a Christmas
Village. OK, not as fancy as the
commercial villages available today but never-the-less an entertaining and a learning
project. I also constructed a variety of
electromagnets by wrapping copper wire around a nail or an iron core and attaching
the opposite ends to the positive and negative battery terminals. A lesson in physics at its finest.
I also recycled the zinc-carbon batteries by tearing
them apart and extracting the zinc shell.
I really don’t know how I learned the shell was zinc or that inserting
the zinc into sulfuric acid produced hydrogen—it was just learning out in the
world! Anyway, I went down to my father’s
gasoline station, found some discarded car batteries and extracted the sulfuric
acid---without my father’s knowledge.
Then it was out to the back yard with the acid, some dish soap, the zinc
and a “firecracker punk.”
Later in life
I learned about the chemical equation: Zn + H2SO4 -->
ZnSO4 + H2. So,
hydrogen is a very flammable gas and effervesces from the solution and produces
bubbles (the dish soap) that can explode when touched with a lit punk! I also learned that one could eliminate the dish
soap, put the solution and zinc into a soda bottle, quickly cap the bottle with
a weak balloon so that the hydrogen gas offered inflation, tie off the full balloon
and carefully remove it to another location.
One then attached the punk to a “long” stick (ten feet or so) and popped
the balloon with a loud explosion and a fireball. An even larger explosion would occur if you
used your breath to further inflate the balloon as a mixture of oxygen and
hydrogen is very explosive. Wow, that is
a real chemistry lesson.
For my experiment in geology I went meteorite and
gold mining with my electromagnets.
Somewhere I learned that iron minerals were often associated with gold
flakes and the trick was to locate iron minerals. So, off I went to the sand pits and outcrops
of the Dakota Formation with my magnets. I only located a few small particles of magnetite
and my magnifying glass did not locate gold.
Then it was off to look for iron meteorites. Those finds turned out to be pieces of metallic
slag used for ballast along the railroad tracks. But it was a learning experience.
The second geology project involved making a compass
although I did not have the slightest idea of how to transport it to the deep
woods. But I took one of my mother’s
sewing needles and magnetized it on my handy-dandy electromagnet by running it
back and forth across the coils maybe 50 times.
I had a small cork floating in an old plastic pan and gently laid the
magnetized needle on the floating cork and watched it slowly turn and point North.
Well actually it was magnetic north but at that point in life I knew nothing
about magnetic declination.
All of these little projects whetted my longing for “real”
science courses where I would be exposed to a variety of laboratory
experiments. However, I learned very
quickly that Imagination is more
important than information. Einstein said that, and he should know (Robert
Fulghum). I was very slow in physics
classes since my skills with a slide rule were lacking—cross off that college
major. In third semester chemistry the breakage
of numerous titration burets broke my budget---scratch off that major. But wait, all was saved with a course in
Physical Geology and I never looked back.
If the dream is held close to the
heart, and imagination is applied to what there is close at hand. Everything is
still possible (Robert Fulghum)!