Spouse stops scientific testing

“Stop it,” hissed Natalie as I tested the resonant frequency of the upper floor of a Pittsburgh shopping mall. Effective for any steel-framed bridge or building, this consists of discreetly jumping up and down at different rates of speed until you find the one that makes the floor vibrate the most. With luck the structure won’t fail, at least not before the inquiring scientist is hauled off to yet another mall store by his aggravated spouse.

I have discovered that scientific curiosity does not necessarily make a person socially acceptable. For example, the discovery that the cash registers at Walmart are sensitive to the electromagnetic impulses produced by my electrical bone-growth stimulator belt was welcomed by neither Natalie nor the hard-working cashiers. But I challenge anyone who has dealt with radio theory to resist walking down a line of cash registers when doing so will cause each in succession to emit sharp, unnatural clicking sounds.

I have a long history of this sort of thing. Local citizens may know that the city hall of Pleasantville is located in a former bank building. It is also where Natalie and I were married in a simple but yet moving ceremony whose solemnity did not prevent me from repeatedly wandering off to inspect the bank vault. You can still see the three precision watch mechanisms that govern its old Diebold time lock.

On our trips I make a nuisance of myself with my little pocket compass. At a subway or streetcar stop it will deflect when a train is coming, and in an airliner I can inform Natalie or anyone else seated nearby of our current heading. Likewise, a souvenir refrigerator magnet I carried demonstrated to a small crowd of other London tourists that the famous Tower Bridge’s ornaments are made of cast iron.

Occasionally my curiosity has been misconstrued, as when years ago I demonstrated that a fluorescent light tube can be briefly lit by rubbing it with a paper towel. This trick must be done inside a dark closet, and females may misunderstand.

The same was true when I took advantage of a deserted, ice-glazed parking lot to show Natalie that modern automobiles are highly resistant to spinning out on an icy road. To her credit, she did not scream.

Things got worse when I began building science demonstrations for my own classes as well as my mobile show at COSI, the great somber science museum in Columbus. The salt-water batteries I built in our kitchen probably weren’t as bad as the electroplating demonstration born in the dining room, and neither of those could compare to the electrically-driven gyroscope that nearly slew me in the garage late one night. Suffice it to say that you can impart enough rotational energy to a lawn-mower wheel to make it climb the wall and try to escape through the window.

And no, I have no immediate plans to start acting my age. Natalie, who still loves me for what I am, would object.

Mark Kinsler is a science teacher from Cleveland Heights who lives in an old house in Lancaster with Natalie and the five cats. He can be reached at kinsler33@gmail.com, at least if Natalie doesn’t learn about the lightning experiments.