Sixth Faraday Evening Skit
May 1997
by Igor Tsukerman
A Faraday Evening Skit has to be about Faraday and about the Dean. Actually, one person once wrote a Faraday skit without mentioning the Dean; unfortunately, that person is not working here any longer.
This skit is about Michael Faraday, Isaac Newton, and the Dean. Any resemblance to real personalities is purely coincidental.
Never Give Up
Everything is possible if you persevere. Keep working. Keep pushing. If you fail the first time, just do it again. You’ll accomplish what you want. I promise. Unless, of course, you give up.
Anyone who is successful knows this simple principle. Never give up. Keep working. Keep pushing. If you fail the first time, just do it again. This is what Isaac Newton said. This is what Michael Faraday said. This is what John Signorino used to say. John Signorino is a guy who I met at one of Faraday’s evenings that I never attended. John said to me: “Never give up. If you fail the first time, just do it again.” He was very much into skydiving.
Isaac Newton spent endless days and nights discovering his gravity law. He was sitting in the garden right under this apple tree, waiting for an apple to fall. It didn’t. But Isaac persevered. He never gave up. He kept sitting, patiently. It wasn’t easy. It was very cold. In England, you know, they have subzero temperatures in the winter. (Maybe because they measure their temperature in Celsius.) But Isaac was sitting there anyway. Then Faraday came along. He came along and said to Newton, “Isaac,” (they were on a first name basis) “Isaac, if you are waiting for an apple to fall to help you discover the law of gravity, you’d better come back in the summer.” And that’s exactly what Newton did. In the summer the apple fell – and the law was discovered. This is what happens if you persevere.
By the way, Newton was also the first to discover Faraday’s law. But he was a man of integrity. When he found that law he said to himself: “No. I can’t take it. It’s Faraday’s law.”
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Never give up. Keep working. Keep pushing. That’s what Faraday did. One day he took a magnet and pushed it through a wire loop. Nothing happened. Faraday was looking for an emf to appear, but it just wasn’t there. He didn’t know how the emf was supposed to look like. But Faraday never gave up. “If you fail the first time, just do it again.” That’s what he used to say. And he kept working. He kept pushing the magnet. Still nothing happened. And then the Dean came along. He came along and said to Faraday: “Mike,” (they were on a first name basis) “Mike, if you are discovering Faraday’s law, you’d better push your magnet properly“. “And what is properly?” asked Faraday. “Well, you hold it the red side up and the blue side down, as described on page 230 of Fundamentals of Engineering Electromagnetics by D.K. Cheng.”
That was it. Faraday held the magnet the right side up, kept pushing – and the law was discovered. This is what happens if you persevere.
Never give up. If you fail the first time, just do it again. If you keep sitting, something will fall on your head. If you keep pushing, something will get induced.
Our Dean, he is like that also. We’ll change our college. Never mind if we are still behind the MIT. Don’t give up. Keep working. Keep pushing. If we keep pushing, we’ll induce an MIT in the Akron U.
Keep writing. Keep applying. Keep pushing our proposals through the NSF, and we’ll eventually induce the NSF. Just hold the proposals the right side up. If we don’t induce an NSF, we’ll induce an ONR or an OAI. If nothing at all gets induced, we’ll keep trying anyway.
Just ask Bob Rogers. Bob works on the human genome project. His job is to put down check marks for each of three billion gene pieces being discovered. Occasionally Bob gets tired, but he never gives up. He will work even faster after the genome project acquires a nearly brand new PC 386 next year. Bob has already marked down plenty of important genes: the gene of left-handedness, the long hair gene, the colon cancer gene, and, most recently, the gene of malignant tenure. A person with the malignant tenure gene typically writes a paper a month but has difficulty remembering what he has written.
Perseverance is the key. But sometimes it’s not enough. Sometimes one needs help. Look at the study that appears in the May issue of Science. The study was conducted by a group of researchers from the University of Middle Carolina. They studied the alphabetical distribution of names among faculty members of various Universities, including the University of Akron. One would think that the distribution of faculty names should reflect the distribution of names in the general population. Not so! Here is one astonishing discovery. At U of Akron, faculty with the initials I.T. are severely underrepresented. Not a single I.T. has been promoted over the last five years. Very few have been hired. The Middle Carolina researchers recommend urgent remedial measures. If no faculty lines are available for hiring new I.T.’s, at the very least the existing I.T.’s should be given an immediate raise.
As for our Electrical Engineering Department as a whole, the Middle Carolina team was quite pleased. Our curriculum is fine. Our classes are clean. Our faculty are steadfast. Our students are always right. Our offices are cool. Sorry, that must be a typo. Our faculty are always right, and our students are cool. But we can do more. We’ll keep working. Keep writing. Keep pushing. Most important, we’ll follow the letter and the spirit of this skit. And then at the next Faraday Evening we’ll be proud of many wonderful things that we have induced.
Other skits:
New Ventures (April 2001)
Dr. Ooooooh
Compumag diary (Sapporo, 1999)
FAQ