Читать книгу Modern Alchemy and the Philosopher's Stone - Wilfried B. Holzapfel - Страница 6

It was a beautiful fall day, warm and dry. The foliage was just beginning to show signs of its expected annual splendor. There was little remaining evidence of the tremendous storm that had occurred the previous spring, downing trees and ripping the shingles off of many of the campus buildings. An exception was the lower trunk of a large tree that had stood in the front yard of one of the professor’s homes on Faculty Row at Wissen University. The wind had apparently broken the tree off some distance above the ground and, instead of having the arborists completely remove the trunk and stump, the owner of the property had asked the specialists to cut the trunk straight off at a height of about six feet. The naked tree trunk had stood for months like a sentinel in the front yard of the home, as if it were guarding the property from passersby.

On this particular day, two potential invaders of the tree’s domain came strolling along the sidewalk only meters from the tree’s position. Actually, they posed little threat to the tree trunk or to the man standing on a stepladder next to it, wielding a large pair of calipers and a meter stick. Only a short while earlier, the man had stripped the bark from unsuspecting stump and laid bare its core, now gleaming in the late afternoon sun. To the approaching pedestrians, the man appeared to be making measurements of the tree’s girth at various heights. He paused frequently to record his results in a small notebook that he kept in the rear pocket of his strangely formal-looking “work clothes.” He did not appear to be the typical tree surgeon and there was no elaborately stenciled truck nearby to indicate that he might be. He paid no attention to the approaching strangers and, in fact, was completely unaware of their arrival. He did not notice as one of the intruders spoke to the other in subdued tones.

“That is Professor Wood,” Marie said to Helen. “I think he is a Physics professor.”

Marie had struggled to recall his name from the new-student-week lectures in the engineering auditorium a month or so ago. “What an appropriate name for his current activity!”

Helen had attended similar introductory presentations but in a lecture hall on the Liberal Arts quad of the university. She passed the scene without an immediate reply to her friend. She had had a strenuous afternoon of classes and was anxious to get back to the dorm and some mental decompression. Like Marie, she had passed the stalwart stump many times during their first weeks on campus, but had failed to take note of its unusual height.

The two of them walked in silence for half a block, before Helen asked Marie, “What do you suppose Professor Wood was doing with the ladder and calipers at that stump back there?”

Unlike Marie, who was considering majoring in Physics or possibly Materials Science, Helen was more oriented towards liberal arts, in general. She was thinking about possibly majoring in Philosophy with a minor in Secondary Education. She had chosen an introductory course, “The Philosophy of Ancient Greeks and Romans,” as her first-semester elective. Her interest in tree stumps was more poetic than practical. The calipers and meter stick were inconsistent with her view of the natural life-cycle of the forest. She viewed logging, for instance, as a necessary evil foisted upon the world’s flora by the ever-encroaching flow of humanity.

But Marie was nominally enrolled in the College of Engineering and was taking the mandatory "Introduction to Engineering" course along with a course in “Physics for Engineers and Scientists.” Marie considered Helen’s question for a few moments before responding.

“It looked like he was taking exact measurements of the amount of material available to him. Maybe he has belatedly decided to get rid of the stump. But he probably could have estimated the weight or volume of the log he wanted to move without using the calipers. I’m thinking he might be contemplating a sculpture or some kind of a signpost.”

“Maybe a bust of Einstein, or a totem pole of famous Noble prizewinners in physics, ” Helen suggested. She laughed as the two continued toward the dormitory complex.

A week passed before Marie and Helen were again walking along Faculty Row. A lot had happened to the stump in Professor Wood’s front yard. He still had the calipers and the meter stick near him on scaffolding he had built around the trunk but was carefully at work with a chain saw. He had already produced a roughly conical shape along the whole height of the form. The top of the column had an interesting recurved shape that reminded Marie of a cap for a garden gnome, but an unusually tall one!

“So much for the idea of a bust of Einstein,” Marie teased her friend. “It looks more like he is at work sculpting one of the ‘cone-heads’ from Saturday Night Live than any physicist I have ever seen.”

“Let’s ask him which one!” Helen proposed with considerable glee.

Marie considered the possibility that she might have Professor Wood for one of her physics classes next year. “I don’t think that is such a hot idea,” she said.

“Oh, come on,” Helen insisted. “It can’t hurt to ask. He’ll probably be flattered that we even noticed the progress that he has made.”

Before Marie could offer further objections, Helen waved her arm in the direction of the sculptor and yelled out, “Hey, Professor! What’s happening?”

The professor turned with a quizzical look, lifted his safety goggles and peered over the top of his spectacles. “Do I know you?” he asked.

“No, my name is Helen Miller. I am a freshman in Liberal Arts at the university.” “Liberal Arts? How do you know me?”

The professor had stepped down from the scaffold, placed his tools carefully on the tarpaulin that he had spread out at the foot of the stump. He strolled cautiously in the direction of the students.

“William Wood,” he offered, extending a hand.

“My friend is in the College of Engineering.” Helen answered. “She recognized you from the new student orientation week.”

Helen shook the professor’s hand. “Marie Willert,” Marie said, somewhat sheepishly offering her own hand toward the professor.

“I am always pleased to meet members of the freshman class. I have not taught a freshman class for quite some time,” the professor said with a welcoming smile.

“We were wondering whose likeness you seem to be sculpting,” Helen continued.

“Oh, it is not that kind of a sculpture,” Professor Wood explained. “I call it United States of the Elements.”

Helen and Marie returned blank stares.

“Let me show you the screenshot of the model that I have made on my computer,” said the professor, briefly turning away from the students to pick up a computer printout that they had not previously noticed laying behind the stump (Figure 1).

The screenshot of the model looked like a winding staircase and, had it been made of tool steel, might have served as a router bit except that it was only approximately symmetric. The teeth of the bit might have been used to shape an elaborate edge to a table top or some other baroque piece of furniture – but the teeth were not all of the same shape and size. Moreover, the teeth spiraled along the vertical axis rather than describing concentric circles.