In 1980, I presented my project "Infinitus" at the Iowa Academy of Science, which led to an invitation to the AAAS meeting in San Francisco, a winning entry at the State Science Fair, and presentation at the International Science Fair. See IAS Annual Report 1979, page 9

My project explored how our perception of space would change if we measured time differently, without violating the principles of special relativity. I used a hyperbola on a ball to demonstrate this concept and passed it around during my talk. In this model the speed of light measures to be infinite, hence the project’s name, Infinitus.

During the science fair in 1979, a stranger accosted me and we discussed space travel. It turns out that he was a Rensselaer representative and he sent me a Rensselaer Scholar Medal based on the discussion.

What impressed him was my concept for traveling at the speed of light. In this concept, the traveler’s brain would be frozen in liquid helium, sliced into thin sections, and scanned to capture neural connections and synapse contents. The data would then be transmitted via radio wave and instantiated into a rent-a-body upon receipt.

The proposal suggested experimenting with charge and capacitors. Two capacitors would be placed in separate vacuum chambers, charged, and then have their plates physically separated. Two plates of opposite charge, one from each capacitor, would be connected together. I hypothesized that the charge would transfer through the connecting wire and could be measured.

I was part of Mary Sievert's exceptional advanced placement chemistry program, which covered both theory and practice. Simultaneously I attended the drama club, run by a wonderful couple who taught at the high school. This was due to a certain young actress. The images on the left come from our high school year book and show me concocting a mixture for the cauldron in Macbeth.

My good friend John had a need for speed, and I had a desire to experiment with aerodynamics. We repurposed my motorcycle and built a race-kart. This involved sourcing parts at a significant discount, ending my guitar lessons to free up time, enlisting the help of the shop teacher for welding, Uncle Gary for cutting the Woodruff key axle, and spending countless nights in my basement shop reaming, drilling, and assembling parts. We got the steering geometry right, and the result overall was quite satisfactory. (Don’t ask what became of my Chevy.)

I wondered what would happen if we turned the wheel on its side, used a track to force the weights into an elliptical orbit, and then forced the wheel to turn. Both leverage and centrifugal force are linear with respect to the radius, so the crowding versus sparsity evens it out. However, when forced to turn, the weights are pulled into the axle when going around one side but free float out on the other side. Would this not cause translation towards one side?

I constructed a wheel using model aircraft plywood and scrap lead which my father and uncle Gary helped acquire. I planned to use pegs and a track, or cables, to force the weights into an elliptical orbit. Construction was not finished due to a mishap when pouring the lead weights that sapped our motivation.

It was also interesting to contemplate what would happen if the outer diameter weights were spinning at relativistic speed and thus weighed more than the inner diameter weights. This could be accomplished with charged particles and electromagnetic fields instead of weights on a track.

My close friend Dave and I founded Audio Wholesale to sell and repair stereo equipment. Dave handled sales, while I repaired the stereos. Dave also suggested that we obtain our ham licenses, which we did, and I subsequently built a Heathkit receiver. Dave was the driving force, while I was the junior partner and fascinated observer. This provided additional money for projects.

While in Junior High I was sent to the electronics teacher at the high school to be interviewed. After we chatted he asked me to explain to his class how transistors work, so I gave that day's lecture. Afterward he said I would not be attending electronics at the high school, but would instead attend the electronics courses at a technical collage. There I gained a technician's certificate.

In junior high school I invented a calculus for solving some of the analytic geometry homework problems. There was no calculus in Radio Amateur Handbook, or the book on Marconi Radios. I had identified kernel forms. E.g. I found the form 1/(1+ a d)^n to be a kernel form for e^a. Happily, when I asked the AI today what function this kernel form represented, it replied e^a.

I acquired two powerful U-shaped magnets and mounted them facing each other, opposite pole to opposite pole, on a greased rod. I added rods that stuck out of the side of each magnet and followed a side track with deflectors at mid-distance. The idea was that when the magnets flew together, the side bars would hit the deflectors and their forward momentum would cause each of them to turn 90 degrees in opposite directions. They would then be same pole to same pole and fly apart, completing a cycle.

If Uncle Ben were right, they would slam into the far ends of the mechanism after the cycle due to having increased energy. Otherwise, they would fall short of the far ends.

While in junior high school I discovered a biography of Guglielmo Marconi at the city library. It contained schematics and descriptions of his radios, which inspired me to try building some of them. With the help of an ARRL Radio Handbook given to me by my dad’s friend and a soldering gun inherited from my grandfather, I successfully got spark gaps to work. However, despite using ground filings to build coherer tubes, I was unable to achieve sufficient conduction to complete a circuit.

We were taught subtraction in second grade. It was presented as something very different than addition, requiring a complex method of borrowing'. Instead I did the exercise problems by adding radix complements. When I did this on a single digit basis, and a sum wrapped around I had to remember to reduce the next digit column by one. When I forgot to do this on one of the problems, Mrs. Hawkings examined my work, her face crinkled and she shrieked, "You can not just pull numbers out of the air". -lol

At a very young age, no more than 4, I became fascinated by cars and tires. Cars were impossible to push and seemed heavy, yet they moved with ease. They appeared to be held up by balloons because dad put air in the tires. How could air hold up a car? I resolved to find out. Balloons pop when poked, so I found some nails in the garage and set one behind the front right tire. In the morning I watched carefully as dad backed down the drive, nothing happened. So I tried again. Then I reasoned that dad must have pulled forward a little before backing and the nail had fallen and rolled away, so the next day I put nails in front and behind the tire. Still nothing.

Some years later at dinner, mom and dad were remeiscing about the old place in Scottsdale. Dad told the story that he kept getting flats when he drove by a nearby construction site.

The next morning I watched carefully from the car window as to how I could walk back all the way to the house without being seen. I didn't want the day care girl to call mom and have her bring me back. I noticed that a block up was a yellow blinking light saw horse. I figured that if I walked on that street instead I would more likely make it back to the house. When the teacher put us down, I left. I then walked up to the blinking saw horse, and turned the corner. Wouldn't you know? After walking little while, there was mom driving up the same street. The construction workers had moved up a block while I had been at the daycare that morning.