morethanenoughtruth

While on a church sponsored retreat and tucked into my cot at night, I began humming. The array of bare coiled springs under the mattress hummed back, but only when I hummed certain notes.  Later I asked my dad why.  He explained the concept of sympathetic resonance specific to the precise (tuned) frequency of that set of springs.  He explained that all flexible structures are capable of bending in response to external pressure, then returning to a relaxed state.  When subjected to a discrete frequency of vibration, a structure will attempt to flex and relax at that frequency, and at a directly proportional amplitude; the stronger the signal, the stronger the responding vibration.

The physical world is amazing, this case in point being the simple coiled set of springs supporting my camper’s mattress.   Everywhere I looked there were wonderful things to learn about.  In this case, the resonant frequency was determined by the composition, shape, and size of the spring wire, by the form and additive effect of the coils, by the fixed locations and terminations of the individual elements and by the nature of the coupling at the points of fixation. Not to be ignored is the length, width, and breadth of the integrated construct.  I have a suspicion that my presence, a weighted shape pre-loading the system, had an implication, but I hesitate, not wanting to spoil what I have understood as a lovely reality by introducing yet another complexity to obfuscate clarity of insight.  (Keep it simple, stupid!)  Visualizing, much less calculating, the whole concept would be difficult, but I was eager to try and see if I could be one of the relentlessly curious who would figure it out.

Equally interesting, imagine a still pond impacted by a single pebble.  The waveform generated propagates outward concentrically at a frequency specific to the viscosity of the fluid, and to the size, shape, surface texture, and weight of the pebble.  A second pebble, dropped at a distance from the original, sets up a pattern specific to its own unique entry.  When the two patterns intersect each other, a new (interference) pattern is created, and a whole new set of observations and inferences can be appreciated describing the additive (diffraction) pattern.  Though any number of waveforms and interstices can be introduced, a multiplicity of added pebbles, rocks, and boulders, creates great beauty and confusion.  Keeping to the simple truths fosters clarity, so I set aside the lovely complexities and pray over the bones of what is laid bare.

When I graduated from high school in 1956, girls didn’t go to engineering school, but that fact meant nothing to me.  My father said I could do anything I wanted to do.  Growing up resisting my mother’s confused realities was good training for resisting peer pressure that said that above all I must please the boys and play dumb.  That struck me as a very condescending attitude.  I wouldn’t like a boy anyway who would fall for such stupid manipulation.  I applied and was accepted at Carnegie Institute of Technology, with a major in Engineering Physics.

First week on campus, I bopped into the office of the head of the Department of Physics, introduced myself, and explained my intense interest in sympathetic resonance and the  spectra of frequencies interacting with physical structures.  A wise and gentle man, full of encouragement, Dr. Winbourne welcomed my innocent enthusiasm and assigned to me a small laboratory usually reserved for graduate students.  He piled it high with black boxes, high frequency oscillators, oscilloscopes, tuning forks, bridge platforms for vibratory analysis of tensioned wire, and pipes of adjustable length to experiment with vibrating air columns.  It was like having my very own toy store.  I jumped in and began trying to learn how it all worked and what to do with all that sophisticated instrumentation that was supposed to answer my questions.  I had a lot of class work, but I could still do this during free time.  It was a perfect setup.  I had two keys, one to the science building front door and one to my lab.  I kept to myself, bothering nobody.

Then one Saturday night before Christmas, as I was leaving, I stopped at the Physics Office to leave a note for the professor telling him I would be off-campus over the holiday.  As I scribbled on a notepad, I suddenly realized that I wasn’t alone in the office.  Five graduate students had slipped in, blocking both exits.  The eldest, a doctoral candidate I had seen in the halls, spoke first:  “We know why you’re here.  You can’t fool us.”

“Fool you?  What do you mean?  I‘m just leaving a note for Dr. Wilbourne.”

“That not what I’m talking about.  What are you doing in Lab 127?

“Doc assigned me that lab to do some experiments,” I snapped.  “What’s wrong with that?”

“You’re here to get your MRS degree.  We know what you’re up to.  You can forget about us.  We aren’t interested.”

“You?” I squawked.  “I‘m here to learn physics.”  My hands squeezed so tight my knuckles turned white, and my breath started coming in gasps.

“You’ll never learn this stuff.  We don’t like you being here.  Get it?   Hand over that lab key and don’t be inside the building except when you have a scheduled class.”

“I don’t have to do what you say.  Let me out!”  I pushed against the shortest creep who was blocking one of the doors with his blubber butt and belly.  It was pretty stupid of me to choose the biggest one to push against.  Did I want to get away, or did I want to prove to myself that it really was hopeless?  I’ll never know.  Sometimes even hindsight is less than 20/20.

Even the smallest of them was stouter than I was.  He grabbed my arm, smirking, and pointed toward my lab instructor.  “Robert, there, has your section for freshman physics lab.  An F in there would finish you.  Is that what you want?”

Robert piped up then, basically a wimpy geek but now emboldened by the others, “You didn’t get the picture, did you, when I wouldn’t let you check out materials and made you just watch the others do the experiments?  It’s a waste of lab space to let a girl do the set-ups, and it takes learning time away from the boys.  I really meant what I said.”

I assessed the dangerous possibilities of my situation and equivocated, “OK.  I’ll give the key to Dr. Wilbourne but not to you.  I‘ll do it.  I promise.  Now get out of my way.  I’m going to start screaming if you don’t let me out of here.”  They sneered and filed out then, heading down the hall.  They called back demands to remember what they had said, yuck-yucking to each other as they went.

The next day after class, I returned the key to Dr. Wilbourne.  I squirmed, full of shame, afraid to tell him what happened, and muttering that I just couldn’t spare time for extra lab work.  My stomach dropped like a rock, like it does even now when I think about the time I had my very own Carnegie Institute research lab but was dumb enough to let five bullies take it away from me.  I hate those assholes but not nearly so much as I hate myself for letting them do it to me.

I was part of the first tide of fearful but courageous young women who beat and broke bodies and brains against the irresistible flood wall of male science.  Now women take it as a given that they are welcomed and often even appreciated.  It’s tempting to hate them as well for giving no credit to those of us who made it possible for those who followed.  I do resist that temptation and feel only pride and happiness in their achievements.  That lovely confidence they claim as their natural right, makes me a retrospective winner in my own right.  Sounds like resonance to me!

__Dorothy Jeanette Martin