My Dad. 18/11/1937- 27/12/2011
My Dad was the smartest man I know (and I know a physicist). He was a great teacher. When I was around ten or so, my interest in science and technology was pretty clear. Dad recalled an experiment he was shown as a boy, and decided we should do it together. Together we built an electric motor from scratch- A broken speaker supplied the magnets (the ring magnet was snapped in two to create two poles) and from memory may have supplied the wire for the windings. An old coat hanger became the armature. Two nails became the commutator although I can't recall what they were nailed into exactly. Folded up strips of aluminium foil were used for brushes. Add a 6 volt torch battery and holy crap, it actually worked! Pretty shaky of course, and sparks flying everywhere. But what a great experiment for a kid to be involved in. I don't think Dad even used a soldering iron on it. The next experiment was going to be a resistive microphone, which Dad recalled making from little balls of graphite made from a pencil lead, which were then sandwiched loosely between two metal plates. We never did get around to it.
Years later, I thought I'd try and recreate our motor experiment. But you know, even with having done a trade in auto electrics, where the most interesting part for me was when we went to trade school and learnt theory, I couldn't recreate it. This was crazy! I thought I had a much better understanding than Dad of the theory. I was using better materials, I knew about applying the right hand rule for a magnetic field, back EMF, even a (very) vague understanding of quantum mechanics. Dad may have been a great teacher, and absorbed everything he read and stored it away but alas, I wasn't the greatest student!
Dad was the smartest man I know, but he was also full of life. I saw him a day before he passed and he was practically skipping. Sadly, his heart wasn't as youthful as his mind. I know though that Dad wouldn't want us to be moping around and while I feel sad writing this brief eulogy, I am so glad he had such an interesting life, right to the end. All I can do is try and be half as productive as him, and remain happy knowing he would be happy too. We'll miss you.
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Topic: Dad (Read 3515 times)
