Alan Lightman on his childhood in science
The story of the author’s extremely early career I n late 1957, around my ninth birthday, the Soviet Union launched the world’s first artificial satellite, called Sputnik. I became entranced with the idea of building a rocket of my own. I imagined the lift-off, the graceful arc
I n late 1957, around my ninth birthday, the Soviet Union launched the world’s first artificial satellite, called Sputnik. I became entranced with the idea of building a rocket of my own. I imagined the lift-off, the graceful arc of the craft as it careened through space. By the age of 13 or 14 I had started mixing my own rocket fuels. A fuel that burned too fast would explode like a bomb; a fuel that burned too slow would smolder like a barbecue grill. I settled on a particular mixture of sulfur, charcoal and potassium nitrate. The body of the rocket, I built out of an aluminum tube. For the ignition system, I used the flashbulb of a Kodak Brownie camera embedded within the fuel chamber. The launching pad, I made out of a Coca-Cola crate filled with concrete, anchoring it with a V-shaped steel girder tilted skyward at 45 degrees.
Somehow I had got it into my head that I needed a passenger. So I built a capsule, to be housed in the upper fuselage of the rocket, and recruited a lizard to ride in it as my astronaut. I constructed a parachute out of silk handkerchiefs and carefully wrapped it around the capsule. A small gunpowder charge—ignited by a mercury switch, a AAA battery and a high-resistance wire—would eject the capsule at the highest point of the trajectory.
The launch went flawlessly. After the countdown, I closed the switch, the Brownie flashbulb went off, the fuel ignited, and the rocket shot from its launching pad. A few seconds later, at apogee, the capsule ejected and came floating gracefully back to Earth. My friends and I hurried over to inspect the capsule and astronaut. I am not sure what we were expecting to find. What we did find was that the lizard seemed to be A-OK, except that its tail had been burned off. Only a blackened stump remained at the base of its spine. Apparently the tail had hung down into the fuel chamber, a detail I had neglected in my various drawings and calculations. I was elated by my success, but I felt bad for the lizard.
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In high school I built many other science projects. After seeing the 1931 movie version of Frankenstein, with the giant electrical spark flashing between two standing antennae, I made an induction coil, which involved winding a mile of thin wire around a magnet core, a laborious feat I managed with the spool of a fishing rod.
It filled me with a sense of personal power. It filled me with self-confidence.
When I got interested in biology and culturing living cells, I built an incubator out of an insulated box, a lightbulb to provide heat, and a thermostat. I was curious about the world. I wanted to understand why things were what they were: What caused the seasons? Why was the sky blue? What made some things “alive” and others not? Did outer space go on forever? Why were dinosaurs so big? Of course, I couldn’t answer most of these questions. But I could do experiments and build things to learn a little about how the world worked.
And there was the great joy of discovery, and discovery on my own.
