Whose Wavelength Are You On?

Physics and Compton and probes all combine in this one and apologies to those who may be offended by the content.

Whose Wavelength Are You On?

It was a summer school in Durham and I was trying to remind myself that I was a tutor representing the organising body and must behave! There were fifteen of us at an Indian restaurant in Durham, all Open University students apart from myself and as the alcohol flowed the jokes were becoming worse. Racist jokes are hardly ever amusing but when directed at hapless Indian waiters they serve to really irritate and embarrass all who hear them. I certainly was wishing myself out of this environment. Feeling guilty by association and not drinking left my mind all too clear to the offensive comments becoming the norm. It’s hard deciding what to do. In a tutorial one could announce in heavy tones “all right, getting back to the interior of the atom we can see…..” But here in this smoky, hazy restaurant I could see that the point of some of these people’s lives was the blame game. If their lives were not what they should be, who was there to blame, who else but the foreigners.

Henry, the main protagonist, had gone on too long and I began to send out annoyance signals. Patience is not one of my strong points. Henry suddenly was startled by a stage whisper from the left. “Hey, the tutor is married to a darky”. Henry’s face suffused with colour. “Don’t get me wrong some of my best friends are coloured!” he addressed me with injured care as if I had just chastised him. The rest of the evening was mercifully short as Henry tried to be overly matey with the Indian waiters to make up for his earlier insults and everyone else had that rather hang dog expression of the ever so slightly guilty party. You could see another anecdote would soon be added to Henry’s repertoire though. Something like “God, you’ll never guess what happened, there we all were in a Packy restaurant and having a bit of fun when it turned out the bloody tutor is married to one!” Geography is never a strong point for such people. The fact that my husband is neither from India nor Pakistan is neither here nor there. India, Africa, S. America, the Middle East, etc. all have in his mind the same non-white skin tones and that is all that matters. Skin tone is far more important than Geographical or indeed historical facts

My son once won a competition for drawing a picture of God. It sounds strange but the local education authority in N.I. had organised a competition for all the schools in its area. The children were to draw their idea of what God looked like. The ten or so winners had their work produced on slides and shown at an award ceremony. When my son’s picture came up the clergyman speaker said “I can tell that this child’s family comes from the east and perhaps that’s why he’s chosen to represent God as a coloured man. I had felt an incredible urge to jump up and shout at the man “just where do you think Christ came from, Belfast?”

However such instances are not uncommon and often offence is not even intended so heightened sensitivity to such things rarely helps either party. By the next day of the summer school I had recovered from the evening before and was responsible for the laboratory workshops that morning. Having outlined to the fifty or so students the experiment they were all about to do, my job was installing the radioactive sources in the equipment. Safety procedures dictated that only I the tutor handled these long glass probes with radioactive sources at the end. I quite enjoyed the drama these caused. They were kept in a lead box with radioactive hazard signs all over it. Beside the box stood a Geiger counter and as I would raise the lid and removed sources the click click of the counter echoed eerily around the room. Only when the glass source had been inserted in the equipment on each lab top and the box closed did the maniacal clicking die down.

O.U. students are eager beavers and all were soon measuring and taking notes. As luck would have it, Henry of the night before was the first to finish. I hadn’t spotted him before that moment. He raised his hand and asked what he should do now. I told him that the next experiment involved him inserting the radioactive probe in his ass and repeating the measurements as before. Thankfully the students seemed to take it with good humour and much laughter, perhaps too much at Henry’s expense.

Unfortunately, at lunchtime the Senior Course Director approached me and asked if I had instructed a student to insert a radioactive probe in his ass, as this was not in accordance with safety procedures. Deciding to brazen it out I told the Director that I would have of course inserted the probe personally and would never have allowed the student to handle the probe himself. The Director retreated to consider his position. No more mention was made except on the last night of the school when special awards were given to all the tutors at the school. Best disco dancer, best singer etc. I won the prize for best experimental modification to the Compton Effect Experiment! In this well-known effect the wavelength of incoming photons collides with an electron and emerges with a changed wavelength, slightly longer.

I like to make an analogy. There are those who are on a different wavelength from ourselves. Collisions on an individual level (mutual interactions if you like) can change the original wavelength subtly and in doing so result in a broader range of views.

Machines Sometimes Bite

I taught at OpenUniversity summer schools for some years and this is a memory of those days.  

Machines Sometimes Bite

The microwave laboratory was huge with massive tables dominating the scene and curling snakes of connecting wires were everywhere, with their crocodile mouths protruding from oscilloscopes and electronic measuring devices of all shapes and sizes. My equipment was at the far end and consisted of a computer controlled measuring device. Any waveguide, just newly designed by engineers, could be connected to my machine and after a period of calibration, the effect of subtle changes in design anticipated. My job, my first proper job, as an assistant engineer in the company was to maintain this equipment and to write innovative programmes to tease out new possible uses of this device. After the initial flush of excitement, there had been the realisation that having to allow others to use my machine was a constant headache. It was not that engineers brought weird and wonderful challenges that exhausted me, it was just the mindless stupidity of computer illiterate people who made life difficult. 

I had an uncle who demonstrated the same mindset, when faced with a hi-fi of my brother’s. He wanted to put on a cassette but didn’t know how to operate the machine. He refused to ask anyone and just fiddled with it. Well, fiddle is perhaps too mild a word for it. He twisted knobs, ran his hand across the front pressing buttons with a kind of maniacal anger in staccato movements, which became increasingly aggressive. I have come to the conclusion that there are those who have a deep-set phobia about gadgets or machines of any sort. This section of society can be further sub-divided into two. Those whose phobia gives  rise to a genuine reluctance to use any machines of any kind, even hand held calculators, and the others characterised by false confidence and aggression, who feel that machines can be brow beaten into working, if treated severely enough. Having had to work with both, I came to prefer the former group because they were easier to help. Careful explanation and encouragement does not yield results for the second group usually, as they really want you to shut up and leave them alone with the machine. They feel deeply convinced that a few hours of their violent interrogation with it, will get the job done. A vivid example of the former group, I discovered at an Open University Physics summer school in Durham. 

I was the tutor for laboratory sessions and all the equipment was laid out in readiness for the students. There was a set of equipment for each pair of students and in this case we were doing a lot of electrical measurements. The students all came in chattering and eager except for one middle-aged woman. She stared at her equipment with the same look that a mouse would give a rather large snake. There was a short pause, then, before I had even spoken, she ran out off the room. There was such an obvious distress in her haste that all heads turned. The staff tutor who happened to be near the door, followed her and tried to find out what could be the matter. At a later staff de-briefing, the school counsellor and staff tutor spoke of her absolute fear of laboratories and equipment. She felt filled with self-doubt and the humiliation of the morning episode had meant that no amount of persuasion could convince her to enter the lab again. It was only the first day of the weeklong school and she was so upset she wanted to leave and go home, immediately. She was embarrassed and humiliated at her ‘silliness’ as she called it. There was a long discussion but no real conclusions.

That afternoon I had my first tutorial with the same group of students. We were talking about Heat Capacity and Einstein’s explanation of this subject. Open University students, as a rule, are the best students in the world, challenging, functioning on all wavelengths and ready to question you to death. They want to understand and they often bring out the best in good teachers. That afternoon however, I lost it. I don’t remember the exact question that threw me, but suddenly all the physics I ever knew floated out off the window. It just drifted away from me, accompanied by my entire ability to think rationally. I stood in front of thirty students and found myself asking in desperation ‘What’s my name?’ Embarrassing? Yes. Humiliating? Yes. One of those events that when you remember it, you talk out loud to yourself, to distract your thoughts. I was creeping back to my room when the middle-aged lady who had been the subject of our de-briefing earlier, stopped me. She said, she had been planning to leave the school this evening but on seeing my performance in the tutorial she had changed her mind. If I, a tutor, could be humiliated like that and go on, then she too, would try again. She would go back into the laboratories! She shook my hand warmly and walked off. I stood there feeling that strange bewilderment of being kicked and thanked at the same time. Anyway all of this is just to show that phobias can be conquered in sometimes unusual ways.

My machine, however was suffering from the phobia-ridden engineers, who mostly had my uncle’s approach to the beasts. My idiot’s guide to running the programme and working the machine was being ignored. Each day I found myself sorting out problems others insisted on making. Engineers often understand the hardware side of computers but some can be a little weak on the software. However I had both hard and soft problems. Not only were people mucking about with the programme, but pieces of the machine, meters, leads etc. were disappearing. 

I was hurt and felt victimised. The only woman engineer: that was it. That was why they chose to borrow bits of my equipment rather than the rest. It was unfair! No one took stuff from the guys; I was seen as a ‘soft touch’. Then one day I tracked down two manuals of the computer. They had disappeared a week earlier. When I found the culprit I pounced. I said things I didn’t think I would, he was very upset and I didn’t give a damn. He apologised and handed back the manuals. My change in attitude meant that pieces of my equipment no longer ‘walked’ as before. I was determined to survive and no one would think of me as soft. Something had been lost as well. That middle-aged lady had sacrificed her fear to go back into the lab and learn new skills, I too had sacrificed something of myself in order to survive in a competitive environment. The only problem was, it didn’t somehow feel right. At the end of the year when I resigned and went back into University to do research, it was also to regain human qualities I felt the loss of in industry. One must progress and learn but become wise in the process, not twisted. It was a coward’s approach, but I really felt there was too much to lose.

life in London

Just in London for the weekend and am amazed at the pace of everything.  Back home in a day and will make a posting then.  Have eaten my way over.  What is it about airports and travel that brings out the hunter gatherer in us all?

Big Dogs and Small Birds

I got Chance as a pup he was on the seventh day in a rescue shelter and was due to be put down that day.  I chose him because he throw himself towards me with ecstasy at the cage wall when I called to him.  He never lost that eagerness and was like that with just about everyone.  I had him for thirteen years and he was a splendid dog.  This one is in memory of Chance.

Big Dogs and Small Birds

I had never lived on an estate before.  Never had to cope with the meanness of small cramped houses and the small cramped spaces around those houses.  We were unemployed with too little money and two many pressures.  Life on the estate began to close in on me.  It wasn’t that the people were so bad; my neighbours were quite nice. It was just that life seemed so awful for everyone.  The only way I could cope was to take the children in their double buggy and walk and walk.  We would cover miles with my dog, Chance, running along side.  When the shopping had to be done, we’d catch the bus and as I struggled with twin buggy, tired toddler, wriggling baby, bags of groceries and my dog up the steps of one bus, the driver muttered, as I paid for my single ticket, “you believe in getting your money’s worth, love!”

The other preoccupation was washing the children.  I gave them a bath every morning and evening.  Don’t ask me why, but it was only when they were bathed and dressed in pyjamas, hair brushed and tucked into bed, that I felt a “good mother”.  Once, when shopping at the local Spar shop on the estate, I’d forgotten my cheque card.  It was only at the check out with a full trolley and two fed up children that I discovered that it wasn’t in my bag.  The shopkeeper would not accept my cheque without it, even with other identification.  What did I do?  I went round the shop and put everything back where it belonged, a full trolley load.  It makes me cringe to think of it.  That I could think so little of my time and energy and be so fearful of causing anyone any offence, even obnoxious shopkeepers.  I was taught to say excuse me and always to apologise.  One day in the queue in the post office this woman pushed in right in front of me.  What did I do, I apologised!  Than later, I’d be angry at my own utter weakness.  Being polite was like having a fatal flaw.  Then I began to change and that was when life on the estate began to really frighten me!  One middle aged woman pushed in, in front of me in the queue in the bank and I tapped her on the shoulder and signalled with my thumb for her to go behind.  She did and this success encouraged me to start sending out more signals.  It was in small ways at first but gradually I became aware that there was a readiness about me to enter the fray.  Like a steel coil inside that was kept constantly tight so that you could unwind on the first person to cross you that day with an instant response.  Aggression is a defensive thing.  When you are cornered economically and socially it is that final withdrawal inside to protect.

Once when walking home we came across a tiny bird on the footpath.  I pointed it out to the children, who looked on in fascination as the tiny bird, instead of flying away, hopped over closer and closer to us.  It finally hopped right between my feet, out of the rain, sheltered by my coat.  It must have fallen out of it’s nest, I concluded, and watched carefully by two boys, I wrapped up a piece of paper in the basket under the pram and gently set the bedraggled bird on it.  When we got home we put it in a box beside the radiator.  I tried to give it something to eat but it was too weak and an hour later it was dead.  My two boys were devastated but it had somehow been inevitable to me.  It had been too young, had got too cold and hadn’t really stood a chance.  I reckon each of us have a tiny, beautiful, fragile bird inside us and sometimes that little bird becomes dangerously vulnerable.

Life on the estate was beginning to eat into my core.  One of my neighbours hung himself; we never knew why.  Next-door Billy and Jean had dreadful fights.  Their little girl would stand at the fence between our small gardens with an awful unchildlike stillness.  My other neighbour, Mary, was dying of cancer and her daughter, Donna, a young unmarried mother, was trying to hold everything together.  One day Donna came in to borrow something and when I asked about her mum, she just put her forehead against the wall and wept.  A young pretty girl, intelligent and funny, and life was wringing her to pieces.  There was just too much pain and not enough love to go around.  Even the tiny toddlers stood around outside growing up in the big bad world of the older children.  It seemed sad that children should have to grow up in packs, like dogs.  Even our dog was finding life on the estate rough.  He had been badly mauled twice.  Once it had been really bad and the vet’s bill crippled us as well.  Other dogs seemed like the people: hostile, defensive and on guard.  One Alsatian was renowned for its vicious nature and would run up and down behind its garden fence, snarling and barking every time someone would pass.  The owner sometimes let the dog out and had repeatedly been reported to the dog warden, because the animal always attacked something.  Once I’d been hoovering in the hallway, when I saw through the glass door, this very Alsatian fighting with a little Chihuahua.  The owner of the little dog, an old bent woman, was ineffectually beating the big dog with a tiny shoelace-type lead that she carried in her hand.  It was having absolutely no effect, of course.  I took the head of my Hoover, and, grabbing the straight pipe section, headed out to help.  I hit the big dog a medium sized blow on the back, but to no avail.  Really getting into the spirit of things I fetched him a harder whack on the back of the head and this time he noticed.  He dropped the little dog, a small matted ball of bloodied fur, and turned to face me.  Another blow caused him to run away but not far.  He really had his killer instinct up by now and tried to circle round me to get at the tiny bleeding dog on the ground.  I told the elderly lady to pick up her dog and carry him home, not taking my eye off the still determined Alsatian.  She lifted the sad little bundle and headed off along the path, but as she turned the corner she shouted “you should keep your bloody Alsatian muzzled, you fucking bitch”.  I stood for a moment bewildered and then I realised that she thought I owned the dog.  She had probably assumed that was the only possible reason I would have got involved.  I went back to my hoovering.  It was kind of funny really when you thought about it long enough.

It was another dog, which was the turning point for me.  I was walking Chance when suddenly a huge mongrel came from nowhere and started fighting with him.  I immediately released Chance from his lead, as from past experience, keeping your dog on a lead while he is being attacked is a recipe for an enormous vet bill.  When loose they can at least run off or defend themselves.  The owner of the other dog came running up and started shouting at me aggressively.  It was the nightmare scenario for me.  A year ago I would have stood praying that the earth would swallow me up.  That it would all end rather than have to endure yet another confrontation.  But looking down, I saw that Chance was standing stiff legged over the other dog, who was lying submissive on the ground.  Dear, placid, good natured Chance had actually won.

Every dog does have its day, as they say.  I turned to face the stream of obscenities from the other dog’s owner and at that moment a thought came to my mind, loud and clear as if someone had whispered it in my ear “she’s smaller than you”.  I took a good pace towards her and steadied myself, looking at her full in the face.  She backed away and I followed.  I really wanted to hit someone and after five years on this estate I was ready to do it.  She took to her heels and ran up her garden path locking her gate behind her.  I stood for a full five minutes thinking about the kind of person I was becoming.  My little bird was fading fast.  As Chance and I walked home I promised both of us that we would leave this estate before something precious was lost.