STICKS AND STONE

Hello, and welcome to October's Autolycan, back with a romp through the seventeenth century in the company of one of its greatest figures.  I hope you enjoy the blog, and if so please continue to spread it to others who you think might enjoy it too!  Many thanks.  But with apologies to the normally immaculate Google Translate - whose resources I fear I may have overstretched this time - let's get on with a simple game of Poohsticks..........

STICKS AND STONE

A top engineer has devised a formula to aid budding players of Poohsticks. The         formula uses area, density and a drag coefficient to help competitors find the perfect twig.                                                                                                                                         

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For as long as he could remember, John Poe hadn't had much time for Wednesdays. The rest of the week was OK, it was a living, he could handle the work and he'd learned to cope with his boss's moods over the years. Most people thought the boss was a really clever guy; no doubt he was, but most people didn't often see the other side of him, the vanity and rudeness, they rarely felt the sharp biting edge of his contempt. This Wednesday morning, he knew, would be no different from all the others. He looked at the clock. About ten minutes till he got in.

Suddenly, the door burst open to reveal the boss, his face wreathed in smiles, his arms spread wide in a warm and generous gesture of welcome.

'Success!' he boomed. 'Success!'

The assistant was startled.

'You mean..... you've found it, then?'

'Better than that!'

'Better than that?'

'Let me explain, young man, let me explain!'

And his number two stood respectfully aside as the outstanding intellect of the age, the greatest ever luminary of the Royal Society, a mathematician, physicist and natural philosopher without equal swept into the room and sat down.

'But Tuesdays' began Poe 'is Philosopher's Stone Club night. Has been for years. You must have looked for it loads of times in every bloody pub in Cambridge. King's Head last night was it? Anyway, you never find it and that's what makes you a miserable bugger Wednesdays.'

Sir Isaac Newton, for it was indeed he, stared coldly at him.

'Right pub, son, wrong name,' he snapped. 'We don't call it the Philosopher's Stone Club no more. We changed it months ago, remember, funnily enough soon after the last time we went to the King's Head. It's the Lapis Philosophorum Societatis now, or was till last night. Latin, see. Keeps the riff raff out.'

'So how does that help?'

'How does that help? Only that we've got rid of all those useless buggers running round like it was a bloody Easter egg hunt, rummaging around looking for the Philosopher's Stone in the cellar or behind that bit where they keep the crisps or in the outside gents. Stupid bloody place to look, if you've got something what'll turn base metals into gold, prolong life, all that, you're hardly going to hide it in the gents, are you? They wouldn't recognise it anyway even if they did find it. Handle it wrong and it would probably turn them all into toads. Not a bad outcome all things considered. Anyway, those of us with a bit more about us have come to a scientifically impeccable conclusion, empirical evidence and everything, and we've thought up a sort of strategy thing.'

'Which is?'

'We've give up. There's no such bloody thing. Stands to reason. So we've turned the club into something else.'

'Something else?'

'Yeah. I used my position as Chairman to pose an open question to all members, get the lads to change the subject, like.'

'And the question was?'

'What about all this gravity business, then? They liked that, so that's what we're called now.'

'What? The What About All This Gravity Business, Then, Club?'

'You're not paying attention, son. You are looking at the Chairman of the Quid Ergo Fiet de hoc Negotium tunc Gravitatem? Societatis.' Tricky language, Latin, but I reckon that's good enough.'

Poe rolled his eyes. Newton smirked.

'I can see you're not in the vanguard of scientific thinking, son. Not like some of us what is at the cutting edge. Gravity, celestial mechanics, planetary orbits, all that! It's a very 17^th Century thing. There's a lot of Tuesday nights in the pub in this, you know. I reckon it's got a lot to do with apples.'

'Apples?'

'Ever wondered why apples what fall off trees always fall down to the ground? Not up. Not sideways. Down. Every time. Why do you suppose that is, then?'

The assistant shrugged.

'Perhaps the tree pushes them down, then springs back to where it was.'

'Don't get clever with me, son. When I want a few Laws of Bloody Motion invented it's me what'll do the inventing, right? Anyway, you've already had a go at this gravity business, remember, I had you watching our apple tree for weeks last year.'

'Waste of bloody time. It was February.'

'Yeah. But from that I secretly developed my First Theory of Gravity.'

'And that is?'

'Stuff tends to pull other stuff towards it. The bigger the stuff, the stronger the pull. There's bound to be a formula there somewhere if I could be bothered to look for it but all that tedious stuff about radius vectors and inverse square laws and suchlike went out of my head 'cos of the Philosopher's Stone thing. Not to mention having to bugger about with classifying cubics, building a reflecting telescope, inventing calculus – much to the disgust of generations of schoolkids, no doubt - and all the rest. It's not easy, science, you know, sometimes I wish I'd settled for a quiet life being a poet instead. Look at Andrew Bloody Marvell, smug self satisfied little twerp, spending all day thinking up rhymes for words like 'time' and 'day.' How hard can it be?'

'Is that it, stuff pulls other stuff towards it?'

'No, there's more. Gravity must be a seasonal thing. I reckon it's strongest in Autumn which is what makes apples fall off trees. Leaves, too. That all uses up quite a lot of gravity so all the stuff what rots on the ground nourishes the Earth and strengthens gravity for next time round. Stands to reason. But we – you – you'll have to do a lot of observations before I can prove it.'

He sat back, nodding slowly but triumphantly.

'I think the Royal Society might perhaps then accept my authority in this matter.'

His number two didn't much fancy spending all Autumn watching apples fall off trees, so he decided to change the subject. That was one thing about old Newton – he might be a curmudgeonly old devil at times, but you could usually distract him with a problem, real or imagined, and pretend it required his scientific genius to solve. He was like putty once you worked him out.

'I was wandering along the river bank yesterday' mused Poe in a careless sort of way 'lovely afternoon, punts everywhere, students picnicking – if that's what they call it these days – and watching some kids playing a simple game. They'd drop sticks into the river off one bridge, then run downstream to the next to see whose stick got there first. One of them wanted to know if there was any way of telling whether one stick would be better than another. I was wondering' he added disingenuously 'whether all this gravity stuff of yours might help. Interesting problem for a keen scientific brain, I thought.'

The assistant watched with a familiar fascination as Newton's brain shifted a couple of gears. He was interested after two seconds, fascinated after three and completely engrossed after four. With luck this would turn out exactly as Poe hoped. To his surprise he found himself holding his breath. Sir Isaac for his part was now every inch the brilliant professional scientist.

'I don't think so,' he murmured, to the other's dismay. 'Gravity, whatever the season, will account for the stick falling into the water, and for the fact that the water flows downhill. Children show that they understand this by running downstream rather than upstream. Beyond that though, other factors will come into play. I'll have a bit of a think - perhaps it's also time to formulate once and for all those rather tiresome Laws of Motion. That should keep me busy for a day or two.'

The assistant was growing tenser. This wasn't turning out how he hoped.

'I think though' continued Sir Isaac 'that we can defer looking at apples rotting for a few weeks at least. I would like you to do some serious research on this game, young man. Spend your summer by the river. Gather as many sticks as you can. Different sizes; different trees; with bark, without bark. Measure them, weigh them, calculate density. Anything else you can think of. Keep a strict record of the properties of each stick and the time it takes. Recruit as many students to help as you wish – the physics department will fall over themselves to help if you call it work experience. Come back in the Autumn with a detailed report and suggestions for a new theory.'

Bingo! This was exactly what Poe had hoped for. A summer messing around by the river pretending to do serious research, lazy afternoons, getting to know some of the students better – preferably the young and pretty ones – and if he made up half the results old Newton would be none the wiser. He realised that his boss was still talking.

'I think that's everything. I don't expect to see you back here till about October. Good luck.'

Newton felt a surge of excitement as he watched him go. This had fallen into his lap! Getting his assistant to count apples and watch them rot was always a dangerous strategy – he would get disheartened at best and mutinous at worst. This way they could both pretend the sticks business was serious research. He'd already realised the blindingly obvious fact that the perfect stick was defined by a formula involving the cross sectional area, the density of the stick and its drag coefficient. What could be simpler? So what if Poe came to the same conclusion in his slow and lumbering way? He could even give his name to this childish game if he wished – Poe-Sticks. He'd like that. Meanwhile he, Sir Isaac Newton, President of the Royal Society, had far bigger fish to fry. And now Poe was out of the way, fry them he would.

His heart leapt as he turned to the heavy oaken chest in his study. His hands trembled as he unfastened the various locks and clasps. There were plenty of them and he broke into a cold sweat as he thought for a moment that he'd lost one of the keys. But no! Everything was as it should be. The hinges creaked as he swung the heavy lid open. His heart missed a beat.

He had been terrified that he would be spotted removing the prize under his cloak, and he never did work out what it was doing in the outside gents of the King's Head.

But there it was in all its glory! And it was all his! He'd found the Philosopher's Stone!

ANAGRAM CORNER

Over the past few weeks many people have filled acres of newsprint to explain that they have a problem with Jeremy Corbyn.

So do I. Mine though is perhaps a bit different from theirs – it's just that you can't expect a decent anagram from a name consisting of twelve letters including two y's and a j.  So I tried one or two variations, and bearing in mind that Jeremy is famously vegetarian came up with:

JEREMY CORBYN'S LEADER!

MR BEARD ENJOYS CELERY!

(although he looks less sure about marrow!)