The Best Australian Science Writing 2012 by Elizabeth Finkel Page B
Authors: Elizabeth Finkel
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pulleys and gears he learned how to control power and enough about electricity and magnetism to build his own electric motors. Hammering nails, drilling holes, welding metal and shooting guns, he began to contemplate the forces holding the universe together. When he starting attending White River High School he learned that this was called âphysicsâ, and he began to engage with the subject in a theoretical fashion.
At 14 Jim acquired his first car, and while still a teenager he began to pride himself on his ability to look under the hood of any car and figure out how to fix it. Today the only car the Carters own that Jim cannot entirely repair is a 1996 Cadillac that Linda inherited from her father: âYou lift up the hood, and you barely recognise the engine,â he says, so loaded is it âwith microchips and black-box controlsâ. Whatever machinery came his way Jim would turn his hand to getting it running smoothly. âItâs just been something Iâve been forced to do by necessity,â he says. âWhen something breaks down you fix it. Every machine is a little bit different and you have to figure out each one for itself, but you can figure out any machine.â
In his late teens Jim set out to build a car from scratch, a project that pushed the boundaries of the DIY ethos far beyond the norms of usual rev-head passion and would prove to be aharbinger of things to come, hinting at the directions in which he would later go with his physics. Jim wasnât content to simply make a car; his vision was to design one from first principles, and to that end he set himself the challenge of constructing a steam-powered automobile. For a teenager the goal proved impossible, but in his twenties Jim realised a part of this plan when he was granted a patent for a steam engine. He called it the INCOBO, for Internal Combustion Boiler, and its design is incredibly simple, having only two moving parts. Unlike other steam engines on the market, in which you have to wait for half an hour after turning them on while the water heats up before you can use them, the INCOBO would âbe on all the timeâ. According to Jim it would be not only convenient but extremely efficient, so from the point of view of fuel economy the INCOBO would be good for the planet. Jim didnât have the funds to build his engine, so instead he built a cardboard model that he animated and filmed. His aim was to show the film to investors whom he hoped might finance the project. As Jim saw it, funders would be getting in on the ground floor of the next automotive revolution.
Jimâs quest for the ideal steam engine offers us a window into the science he would soon begin to articulate. In Jimâs theory of the universe, everything is mechanical; like the INCOBO, the world he imagines is made up of simple interlocking parts. As with his engine, none of the parts is complicated and you donât need much mathematics to understand how it works. In this universe all matter and energy are explained by the mechanics of subatomic particles that are shaped like tiny circles of coiled spring. Jim calls this form the âcirclonâ and in his theory almost everything that happens in the physical world can be explained by the ways in which circlon-shaped particles interact. As in an engine, where gears intermesh, in Jimâs universe all things happen through the intermeshing of circlon-shaped parts.
Diagram of a subatomic circlon by James Carter
Above all Jim believes that atoms are conglomerations of circlon-shaped particles. Here protons, electrons and mesons â the basic building blocks of matter â are simply different sizes of the basic circlon form and they link together to form a sort of subatomic mesh. Simple atoms such as hydrogen and helium are made up of just a few circlon-shaped particles, while more complicated atoms such as uranium are composed of several hundred. In this scheme, circlons fit
At 14 Jim acquired his first car, and while still a teenager he began to pride himself on his ability to look under the hood of any car and figure out how to fix it. Today the only car the Carters own that Jim cannot entirely repair is a 1996 Cadillac that Linda inherited from her father: âYou lift up the hood, and you barely recognise the engine,â he says, so loaded is it âwith microchips and black-box controlsâ. Whatever machinery came his way Jim would turn his hand to getting it running smoothly. âItâs just been something Iâve been forced to do by necessity,â he says. âWhen something breaks down you fix it. Every machine is a little bit different and you have to figure out each one for itself, but you can figure out any machine.â
In his late teens Jim set out to build a car from scratch, a project that pushed the boundaries of the DIY ethos far beyond the norms of usual rev-head passion and would prove to be aharbinger of things to come, hinting at the directions in which he would later go with his physics. Jim wasnât content to simply make a car; his vision was to design one from first principles, and to that end he set himself the challenge of constructing a steam-powered automobile. For a teenager the goal proved impossible, but in his twenties Jim realised a part of this plan when he was granted a patent for a steam engine. He called it the INCOBO, for Internal Combustion Boiler, and its design is incredibly simple, having only two moving parts. Unlike other steam engines on the market, in which you have to wait for half an hour after turning them on while the water heats up before you can use them, the INCOBO would âbe on all the timeâ. According to Jim it would be not only convenient but extremely efficient, so from the point of view of fuel economy the INCOBO would be good for the planet. Jim didnât have the funds to build his engine, so instead he built a cardboard model that he animated and filmed. His aim was to show the film to investors whom he hoped might finance the project. As Jim saw it, funders would be getting in on the ground floor of the next automotive revolution.
Jimâs quest for the ideal steam engine offers us a window into the science he would soon begin to articulate. In Jimâs theory of the universe, everything is mechanical; like the INCOBO, the world he imagines is made up of simple interlocking parts. As with his engine, none of the parts is complicated and you donât need much mathematics to understand how it works. In this universe all matter and energy are explained by the mechanics of subatomic particles that are shaped like tiny circles of coiled spring. Jim calls this form the âcirclonâ and in his theory almost everything that happens in the physical world can be explained by the ways in which circlon-shaped particles interact. As in an engine, where gears intermesh, in Jimâs universe all things happen through the intermeshing of circlon-shaped parts.
Diagram of a subatomic circlon by James Carter
Above all Jim believes that atoms are conglomerations of circlon-shaped particles. Here protons, electrons and mesons â the basic building blocks of matter â are simply different sizes of the basic circlon form and they link together to form a sort of subatomic mesh. Simple atoms such as hydrogen and helium are made up of just a few circlon-shaped particles, while more complicated atoms such as uranium are composed of several hundred. In this scheme, circlons fit
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