SNEEZE

  Kalamazoo to Chicago makes a great day trip, where we went to the Museum of Science & Industry. Naturally, for a science teacher it would bring out the inner child, like a kid in a toy store, so many cool exhibits and hands on displays. Full size airplanes hung from the ceiling, light was scattered by a great glass prism and there was even a captured German submarine from WW2. But the most impressive, best remembered feature was the Gravity Well. It is large, a meter or more in diameter, a funnel that is nearly flat at the top like the bell of a french horn. But as you move inward the pitch steepens until the neck of the funnel drops into a vertical shaft with a radius of only an inch or so. Around the top edge is a slot-like track where you can drop coins and watch them roll down onto the surface of the gravity well. Momentum carries it out onto the nearly flat surface but the gentle slope to the middle makes the penny’s path start to curve in a downward spiral.

Once the penny has acquired an irreversible trajectory it seems to gain speed. But it doesn’t really gain speed, not if the designer got the math right, it only sounds like it. The sound of the coin going ‘round and ‘round would be boring but the doppler effect holds your attention. Moving around and away from the ear, the sound pitch lowers, only to rise again as it makes the turn and starts coming back. The sound gradient is so small but still important to keep the onlooker engaged.  

Obviously, everything has been calibrated to keep the penny on course, not to lose its way, not to wobble or fall. Its round shape and the coefficient between its mass and the pitch of the slope keep the coin rolling, descending on a predictable path. This is really, way-cool stuff. As the coin sinks deeper into the well its speed remains the same,(speed=distance/time). So said, revolutions inside the well increase their frequency. The coin makes more circles in less time but without any change in (d/t). At the bottom of the well the penny disappears into a black hole. Wow; gravity wells and black holes, you should have known that was coming. That story will have to wait for another day. By that time the penny’s ‘round-&-‘round is at seemingly break-neck speed. It loses the pulsating doppler RRRRrrrr-RRRR-rrrr to a buzzing sound. The impending fate of the whirring coin was our only concern. Then it’s all quiet.

In our case, my kids all respond the same: heads turned with a wondrous grin. They looked back to the bottom of the gravity well, turn to their dad and held out a hand, an unspoken request for another penny. They had no reservations about putting several coins in the slot, one after another so the sight and sound were compounded. The museum doesn’t make a lot of money on the gravity well but still, they got all of my pocket change. When you run out of pennies, all you can do is graduate to nickels and dimes. I tried to stop the run on my coin purse but we were hooked. We rolled quarters down the chute until there was nothing left in my pockets but lint. When was the last time you went to the Museum of Science & Industry! Next time, take a roll of pennies.

It’s a pretty good model, a metaphor for the lead up to Christmas. The slow, day to day calendar watching follows a set cadence but the tempo picks up just like the coin down the chute. Finally, in the moment of truth, all the money has been spent and everybody grins. My Xmas started unfolding on the 22nd. We ate too much and filled a barrel with wrapping paper. There were four generations of family in the house and we all went home friends. 

The come & go of New Years is more like a sneeze; not much preparation, little or no warning, your eyes blink and it’s over. The New Year can be a new beginning but you have to make it so. I experience new beginnings all the time, who needs a holiday or a season to start over or try something new, sort of like a sneeze. I don’t think life, at least no mine, is metered out in years. We try to make it so but I think this life is served up in moments that pass so fast you can’t capture them like hanging your hat on a hook. The moment is so busy, so complicated, it passes so quickly that assimilating a year in one day would require a wild imagination, run amok no less. But I’m starting to feel a New Year’s Sneeze coming on. I will be ready with some eggnog and a handkerchief.