Experiments -- Fiction; High school teachers -- Fiction; Science fiction; Short stories
The classroom settled into an uneasy silence. Mr. Tedder waved an
instructive hand toward the apparatus set up on the marble top of the
demonstration bench. "As you can see, I have a set of three solenoids,
or coils of insulated wire, connected to a source of alternating
current. A sudden surge of this current through the outermost solenoid
will give an iron-cerium alloy bar placed at the center of the
apparatus an impetus toward horizontal motion." Stetzel and Guenther,
who were conscientious, took rapid notes. The rest of the class was
divided between those students who were surreptitiously catching up
on the adventures of "_The Rocket Patrol_" and those who were quietly
sinking into sleep.
* * * * *
Mr. Tedder continued. "The alloy bar's initial movement will be
frustrated, as it were, by the action of a second solenoid placed
within and at right angles to the first. A third coil, within and at
right angles to each of the outer two, completes the process. The
winding ratios of the three solenoids are 476:9:34." Stetzel and
Guenther scribbled the numbers rapidly; Ned Norcross, in the back row,
stirred in his sleep, and two members of the Class of '95 who shared a
volume of the Rocket Patrol's exploits agreed to turn the page.
"What happens to the bar of iron-cerium at this point is a matter
of conjecture. All observers are agreed only in that it disappears.
Perhaps it leaves the coils so rapidly that it neither injures the
wires nor can it be seen. Perhaps the bar passes through a temporary
fissure in the three-dimensional system we perceive, falling into some
yet-unconceivable other dimension. Doctor Ziegler, who first observed
this effect, inclines to this latter belief." Mr. Tedder placed his
fingers on the telegraph key he'd rigged up to close the circuit
through his apparatus. "Watch closely," he cautioned, tapping down on
the key.
* * * * *
_On the twenty-third planet at a distant sun--a planet called by
its inhabitants a name for which there are no equivalents in human
phonetics--a Young Being in the early stages of pre-maturity tangled
the minds of his elders with feelings of anguish. His teacher had
disappeared!_
* * * * *
Ned Norcross, who was taking Junior Physics II for the third time,
had his mind on neither the Ziegler Effect nor the tragic results of
last night's basketball game. He was slumped at his desk, dreamily
rehearsing the topography of one Honey LaRue, a strip teaser who
nightly practiced her art at the Club Innuendo. Norcross pried himself
up on one elbow to glance toward the clock above the demonstration
bench, then slumped forward on his desk in a faint. Up on the marble
top of the demonstration bench, pulling off a right silk glove in time
to the lazy ripple of a snare-drum, danced Honey LaRue.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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