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01 May 23 - 05:48 PM (#4171262) Subject: Destroyer Benson From: Joe_F Destroyer Benson (Tune: The Garden Where the Praties Grow, perhaps more familiar as The Sick Note. I heard this story, already much embellished, in 1959.) If you will please to take your seats and turn attentive ears, A Harvard tale I'll tell to you, from Pusey's golden years. There was a wise professor then, a chemist known to fame -- Played golf with Eisenhower. Kistiakowsky was his name. He had a brilliant student, name of Benson, and 'twas said If you asked him for an orbital, he'd do it in his head, But if he touched a test tube, it invariably broke, And when he flipped the switch, the centrifuge went up in smoke. It happened that the Boston Globe reported in those days The Navy Yard had sent a warship sliding down the ways. 'Twas called Destroyer Benson, 'twas the pride of our Navee. "Aha!" Destroyer Benson said, "That's just the name for me". One night Destroyer Benson labored in the lab alone. The very plumbing in the sinks could scarce suppress a groan. He had a flask of mercury and wished to know its mass; He put it on the balance in its little house of glass. He loaded up the other pan with every weight in sight. The balance never budged; the tongue hung stiffly to the right. With sudden inspiration, to the cabinet he strode Where he had heard that Kistiakowsky's own gold weights were stowed. He piled them on the right-hand pan; the beam swung round at last, And then it broke and dropped the flask, which came down hard and fast. It shattered, and the mercury poured out and swirled around; The steel weights floated in it, but the gold ones stood their ground. Now if you are a chemist or a dentist, you've been told That mercury on contact will amalgamate with gold: The atoms walk their way into the crystal grains, and then There isn't any easy way to get them out again. It soon occurred to Benson the professor might be sore To find his own precision weights now weighed a little more. "I'll try some heat", he thought, and he assembled for the task A clamp, a Bunsen burner, and an Erlenmeyer flask. Alas, the weights within the flask stayed silvered as before, Though Benson turned the flame up to a gratifying roar. "I'll pump it out", he theorized, and so he went and stole A pump, a vacuum hose, a tube, a stopper with a hole. He went to throw the balance out, he heard a sucking sound, Turned anxiously towards the bench, and this is what he found: The flask had softened and was now completing its collapse; The stopper melted on the weights and trickled through the gaps. Now just imagine, if you will, that coruscating mass Of precious weights, now shrink-wrapped under curves of gleaming glass, Old gold and new quicksilver all entwined with threads of black: Well, that's the way Professor Kistiakowsky got them back. Said he, "A synthesis like this can scarcely be believed. I hope that you took careful notes on how it was achieved. In Arts as well as Sciences 'twill get you a degree, And tourists in the Fogg will see your shining Ph.D. We'll write it up this afternoon -- there is no other way. I can't afford to have you here at Harvard one more day. And soon in Cambridge there'll be no-one left to tell the tale: I'll catch a plane to Washington, and you can go to Yale." -- Joe Fineman (1998) |
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01 May 23 - 08:49 PM (#4171273) Subject: RE: Destroyer Benson From: cnd Though obviously not the same, the whole time I read it I was reminded of the old Tom Lehrer song, Lobachevsky |
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01 May 23 - 08:57 PM (#4171274) Subject: RE: Destroyer Benson From: Joe_F Well, I first heard Lobachevsky in 1954 (my mother gave me Lehrer's first record as a graduation present). But I don't see the resemblance. |
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02 May 23 - 09:25 PM (#4171374) Subject: RE: ADD: Destroyer Benson From: cnd No resemblance other than scientific comedy and the inner machinations of my mind :) |