The Birth of a Laboratory

When I was about eleven years old Greg left to serve a mission in Sidney, Australia. While I was sad to see him leave this was a turning point in my life. Let me back up a little. When we still lived in Leavitt my Dad (who was a carpenter) was contracted to tear down the old Leavitt school house. In so doing he kept all of the laboratory equipment that was there. Sadly, it was probably Dad tearing down the Leavitt School house that led to his death. Dad died in 1998 from Pulmonary Fibrosis and while years of farming and breathing all of the dust and chemicals along with Carpentering and breathing all of the sawdust certainly contributed to his disease, pulmonary fibrosis is commonly associated with asbestos and the Leavitt school house was filled with asbestos. It apparently caught up to him.

All of the lab equipment from the school was given to Greg and when Greg left on his mission I inherited it. All of this equipment was in a small storage closet down stairs and it was now mine. There were test tubes, flasks, Bunsen burners, some chemicals, but more than anything it was an inspiration to me. I immediately proceeded to customize this little room to my own personality. An old table top served as the lab bench. The table top had a Formica top and a metal trim that ran all along the outside edge of the table. I had an old transformer from a train set that I mounted underneath the table and connected the output from the transformer to two bolts that I ran through the table. I wired a plug underneath the table and put a switch underneath the table that could turn the plugs off and on. This way I could plug the transformer into the plug and turn it off and on with the switches. This gave me a variable voltage on the two bolts that went through the table top. I used this voltage to run all kinds of experiments. My next big acquisition was a high powered high voltage transformer. Our Bishop (Bryce Cahoon) owned a lumber yard down town called "Cahoon Lumber". His lumber yard used to be an old "Roxy" Movie Theater and it still had the big old Roxy sign out front similar to what you see here. At one time the word Roxy had been spelled out in neon letters but they were all broken now. I knew that neon signs required a high voltage to operate so that in that sign somewhere there had to be one very high voltage transformer. I asked Bishop Cahoon if I could climb up onto his sign and get the transformer out of it. He looked at me and said, "it has a transformer in it?". I assured him that it did and since he wasn't using it I would be very happy to put it to good use. He said, sure go ahead. I climbed up onto the sign and sure enough, there inside the word Roxy was a big transformer that I unwired and hauled off home. I also noticed that the letter "O" from Roxy was still intact so I took the "O" with me as well. I put two more bolts through my table top and mounted the transformer under the table. I wired the transformer to the bolts and then I hooked up another plug and switch and plugged it in. I now had two terminals, one that varied from 0 - 12 volts and the other that gave out a very powerful 30,000 volts of electricity. I doubt Bishop Cahoon would have let me take that transformer if he'd known what voltage those things gave off. I mounted the neon "O" in the lab and turned it on but it didn't take long before I wanted something a little more spectacular. My first project with 30,000 volts was a "Jacobs Ladder". A Jacobs Ladder (remember the Bible story where Jacob saw a ladder that ascended into heaven?) consists of two rods that stand vertically but aren't quite parallel. The two rods are closer together at the bottom and further apart at the top. If you strike an arc between the two rods the arc will form near the bottom of the rods since the wires are closer together there but the heat from the arc causes the arc to rise and as it rises the rods get farther apart and so the arc will extinguish itself. The process then starts over again. I then made two aluminum balls out of aluminum foil and created an arc between the two balls. It was one very powerful arc and the smell of ozone in that room was very powerful. I love it. I then made a capacitor out of quart jars and aluminum foil to try and get the arc to pulse making longer sparks. It worked quite well.

We had a cat at that time named Sam (at least I think it was Sam) and I figured Sam would enjoy the smell of ozone and watch my new arc with me. I found the cat and held him on my lap and we watched the arc together. Sam didn't really enjoy it like I did but I held him fast and he couldn't get away. Earlier that day I had been running my little steam engine from water that I was boiling in an Erlenmeyer flask. The steam had left a big puddle in the middle of the table. What I hadn't noticed was that the puddle of water was slowly moving towards the bolts in the table that acted as my terminals. Just as Sam was protesting the show I was forcing on him, the water created a short circuit from the high voltage terminals to the metal trim at the back of the table. Thirty thousand volts then ran from the terminal, to the metal trim and following the metal trim it came all the way around to the front of the table where it entered into Sam's front paws, it went through the cat and into me, through me and into the floor. Sam and I both convulsed uncontrollably and the poor cat let out a scream that would curdle your blood. Sam recoverd faster than I did and I saw him leave the lab in a blur. Mom and Dad were sitting in the living room and our spiral stair case went from the basement through the living room and up stairs to the second floor. They say they saw this white streak going up the pole of the staircase to the upstairs. When I finally managed to poke my head up the stairs they asked what I had done to the cat.

Poor Sam died of blood cancer not long after that. I wonder if a cat can get blood cancer from a severe electrical shock?

Getting electrocuted gave me another wonderful idea. My neon transformer was way too powerful to shock people with (I knew that first hand) but I figured the spark from a cars ignition coil should be safe. The only problem was trying to figure out how to hook up a breaker like the points they have in a car. It then dawned on me that I didn't need a breaker because the 12 volt transformer I had was alternating current and the coil would simply act as a transformer. I hooked the 12 volts to the primary coil and I used a spark plug wire for the secondary and grounded it to the housing of the coil. I then set this up behind our couch and I took a cushion from the couch and opened the zipper on the back of the cushion. I put two sheets of aluminum foil inside the cushion just under the fabric. I figured thirty thousand volts shouldn't have much trouble going through the thin fabric. I hooked the spark plug wire to one sheet of aluminum foil and the other foil I hooked to ground. I figured that once I plugged the transformer in that the two sheets of aluminum foil would have about 30,000 volts similar to my neon sign but it would have much less current and would not cause any permanent damage to the human body. My Dad watched me set this whole thing up an so we waited for my first victim. Along comes Lester and he plops down right on my special cushion. Filled with excitement I flipped the switch and nothing happened. I was so disappointed. I went around to the front of the couch and pulled Lester out of the seat and plopped myself onto the cushion to see what the problem was. Once again, violent spasms went through my body and I bounced around on the cushion for a while before I could flop myself out onto the floor. I had absolutely no control over my body. Having confirmed that my project did indeed work I was preparing for my next victim but Dad, having seen my reaction made me disassemble my project. I figure I had the first tazer.