Frank Einstein and the Electro-Finger

by Jon Scieszka

  Klink wipes Watson’s spitball off his dome with his squeegee attachment. “Even if those humans are—”

  “You guys would love this!” yells Bob. “A fella up here was telling us the northern lights are all caused by solar wind, and how Earth is a magnet and—”

  Ssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

  A burst of static blots out both the sound and picture of Bob and Mary on the Dimetrodon screen.

  Frank hangs up with another eye poke.

  “More energy. It’s everywhere,” says Frank. “That static was probably caused by a solar flare’s energy cutting off the phone transmission.”

  “Very likely,” says Klink. “Because solar-flare energy is what causes the aurora borealis. Charged particles from the sun collide with gas atoms and molecules in your planet’s atmosphere, and emit different-colored light energy.”

  Watson loads a dried pea into his shooter. “But why do you have to go to the North Pole to see it?”

  Watson blows another quick puff. This dried-pea bullet also misses its target and bounces off Klank with a metallic ping!

  “The North and South Poles are the two places where the Earth’s magnetic field is strongest,” says Frank. “So that’s where the solar wind/atmosphere collisions glow the most.”

  Watson twirls his peashooter. “The Earth is a magnet?”

  “Exactly!” says Frank Einstein. “It has a magnetic north pole and south pole—just like every magnet. It’s what makes a compass work. The magnetic end of a compass needle points north.”

  Frank thinks:

  Magnetism comes from moving electrons.

  Electrons that are moving in huge loops.

  What are moving electrons called?

  Electricity.

  Invisible. Wireless. Electricity.

  Frank Einstein scratches his head, making his hair even messier than usual. “That gives me an idea. To the junkyard!”

  THE TWO-TON BALL OF BLACK FORGED STEEL ON THE END OF A chain swings away from the tall, striped, concrete smokestack next to the river.

  Inside the crane, a long, hairy ape hand pushes the swing control lever left.

  The thirty-meter boom of the crawler crane pivots left.

  The wrecking ball stops at the top of its arc . . . then swings back, following the boom, and smashes into the last Midville Coal Plant smokestack with an earth-shaking thump!

  The smokestack wobbles, tilts, and—BOOM CRASH—collapses in a heap of brick and concrete and old coal dust.

  The entire Midville Coal Plant, which used to:

  burn coal

  to

  heat water into steam

  to

  spin turbines

  to

  run generators

  to

  produce electricity

  to

  send to transformers

  to

  transmit electricity to half of the houses in Midville . . .

  . . . is now a pile of rubble.

  Mr. Chimp pushes his bright yellow hard hat back onto his head. He slaps the dashboard of the crane’s control cab and hoots a pleased “Hoo-hoo-hoo.”

  T. Edison pulls a new notebook from the pocket of his orange safety vest and makes a very careful big black check mark.

  “Midville Coal, done! Two more power plants left to smash. Then the only one working is my hydroelectric plant!”

  Mr. Chimp backs up the crawler crane and puts it into PARK. He drops the two-ton wrecking ball to its cradle on the ground. He then shuts off the engine and signs:

  Edison climbs down from the crane. “Our? What are you yapping about? Our what?”

  Edison waves his hand at Mr. Chimp.

  Mr. Chimp does not like humans waving hands at him. He bark-screams a very loud “Ooo-ooo-AAAAHHHH-AHHH!” and slaps an open hand against his chest.

  “Oh, fine. I know, I know. Half the power plant is yours.”

  Edison takes a rolled-up sign over to the fence surrounding the plant. “But this stroke of genius is all mine.”

  Edison unrolls the sign and ties it to the fence.

  “We’ll call it ‘building,’ but these idiots won’t even understand that we are destroying everything except our power plant.”

  SITTING IN THE MIDDLE OF GRAMPA AL’S BACKYARD JUNK PILE, Frank Einstein consults his Energy notebook.

  “Here are the basics we need to know,” says Frank. He continues:

  “Energy is all around us.

  “Energy is what makes everything happen.

  “Energy is a property of matter.

  “Energy comes in many forms . . . like light, heat, sound, electrical, chemical, mechanical, and nuclear.

  “Energy cannot be created or destroyed. But it can be transferred from one object to another. And it can be converted into different forms.

  “And forces!” Frank adds. “Forces are the ways that energy is applied. The pushes and the pulls that get things moving.”

  “I have added jets to my legs to get things moving,” says Klank. “Watch!”

  Klank pushes a new green button on his side panel. Small rocket motors on the bottoms of his metal feet fire up with a low, roaring blowtorch sound.

  Klank rises slowly up off the ground.

  Watson checks the engines. “Saturn V F-1 booster rockets! Nice!”

  “Wow,” says Frank.

  Even Klink is impressed. “Very nice.”

  Klank rises higher. He turns his feet right and flies left. He turns his feet left and flies right.

  “A perfect demonstration of all three of Newton’s Laws of Motion!” says Frank.

  “Huh?” says Klank.

  Klank rises higher.

  “One: An object at rest will stay at rest unless a force acts on it.”

  The tiny rockets roar a bit louder. Klank zigs and zags around the backyard a bit more wildly.

  “Two: When a force acts on an object, that object will move, speed up, slow down, change direction. The greater the force, the greater the change of movement. What are you using to control the thrust?” asks Frank.

  “What is that?” yells Klank.

  “Thrust!” repeats Frank, now shouting above the building roar of the rockets. “The amount of energy the engines are pushing out!”

  “OHHHhhhh,” says Klank, bouncing off the brick wall of the back of Grampa Al’s Fix It! shop. “I have not figured that ooooouuuuuuttttt . . .”

  Klank’s foot rockets erupt at full power.

  Klank flies around the yard, bouncing off walls, fences, telephone poles, and wires. His legs flop. His legs twist. His legs wrap around each other. And he roars straight up into the sky.

  “Three: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction,” says Frank.

  “Heeeeeeelllllllp!”

  “Point your feet up!” yells Frank.

  Klank points his feet up. He stops rising, turns in a big, jet-propelled curve, and rockets back down to earth, into Grampa Al’s backyard, with a SMASH BOOM BLAAAANG, crushing three old metal file cabinets, a shopping cart, and a baby grand piano.

  Klank’s foot rockets sputter out and go quiet.

  Klink rolls over to Klank and helps untwist his legs.

  “Nice demonstration of Newton’s Three Laws,” says Watson.

  Phooomph! goes one last blast of a rocket in Klank’s left foot.

  “I am going back to a safer form of energy,” says Klank. “Badang badang. Badang a-lang a-ding dong. Boogie bing bong.”

  “What?” says Watson.

  “Ding ding ding,” plays Klank.

  And Klank goes out.

  FRANK FINISHES REPAIRING KLANK, TIGHTENS THE LAST SCREW, and closes the big robot’s foot-rocket panels. Klank helps, tightening his own bolts with his monkey-wrench hand.

  Frank stands up and dusts off his lab coat. “OK, back to the Energy drawing board. Let’s keep this simple.”

  “Yes,” agrees Klink, showing off by blinking his new light-energy attachment. “As Sir Isaac Newton so simply put
his Three Laws of Motion in his book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica . . .” Klink pauses and hums for a second. “Which I have just read. In the original Latin.”

  “Ooh! Ooh!” adds Klank. “I am reading that, too.” He blinks his antenna bulb. “And there is a piece of cheese on the basketball court, and if you touch it you get the Cheese Touch. It’s like cooties.”

  Klink whirs and searches his memory. “I do not see where Sir Isaac Newton wrote about the Cheese Touch . . . or the Caseum Tago . . .”

  Watson laughs. “It’s from the first Diary of a Wimpy Kid.”

  “Yes!” beeps Klank, waving his big duct-hose arms around. “It is amazing! And Sir Isaac Newton is very good at drawing in that book, too.”

  “No, no, no,” protests Klink.

  Watson nods. “Wait until you get to the end.”

  Klank stops moving. “What? Does something bad happen? Something scary?”

  Klink hums and speed-reads from his library connection. “Rowley has to—”

  “Don’t tell him!” says Watson.

  “Why not?” asks Klink.

  “It’s more fun to read it yourself.”

  “It is information. How can it be fun?”

  “Because. It just is.”

  “Hmmmmmmmmmm,” fumes Klink.

  Frank laughs. “I can’t believe you guys are arguing about cheese. Klink, help us out with ‘simple machines.’”

  “Researching ‘simple,’” says Klink. “Six simple machines: the simplest mechanisms that provide mechanical advantage . . . for you weak humans.”

  Watson eyes Klink. “That last bit doesn’t sound like part of the definition.”

  Klink spins his webcam eye. “I added it because it is true. One: the inclined plane.”

  “Like a ramp,” says Frank.

  “Two: the wedge.”

  “An ax,” says Frank.

  “Three: the lever.”

  “Like a crowbar,” says Watson.

  “Four: the screw.”

  “Like a screw!” guesses Klank.

  “Five: the wheel.”

  “Bicycle wheel,” says Watson.

  “And six: the pulley.”

  “Like the pulleys in Grampa Al’s dumbwaiter,” says Frank.

  “Those are all simple machines,” says Frank. “And all great ways to increase mechanical power. But I was thinking—”

  “Hey!” says Klank. “Why did the simple machine throw the butter out the window?”

  “We do not have enough information to answer the question,” says Klink, “but we may guess that the machine was built to throw butter.”

  Watson really wants to know. “Why did the simple machine throw the butter out the window?”

  “Because he wanted to see a butterfly!”

  “Whaaaaaa?” says Klink. “That cannot be true.” Klink shorts out and falls into his GPS glitch. “Bzzzzzzzzt. Recalculating route. Recalculating route.”

  Watson and Klank laugh.

  Frank shakes his head and tries not to laugh. But that is just not possible.

  FRANK CLEARS OFF HIS LAB WORKBENCH AND SETS UP HIS EQUIPMENT. “So here is the heart of the idea—electricity and magnetism are two different forms of the same thing.”

  “Electron energy,” says Klink, holding up both his lightbulb and magnet attachments.

  “Exactly,” says Frank. “Electricity can make magnetism. And magnetism can make electricity.”

  “Like how chocolate milk is both chocolate and milk,” adds Watson.

  “No,” says Frank Einstein. “Not at all like that. But interesting, Watson. Observe this experiment.”

  Frank picks up a big iron nail. He sticks it into a pile of paper clips, then pulls it out. “Just a plain old nail, right?”

  “Right,” says Watson.

  Frank winds a copper wire around the nail.

  “But if we wrap the iron nail in copper wire . . .”

  Frank tapes one end of the wire to the top of a battery, the other end of the wire to the bottom.

  “. . . and run electrons from the battery through the wire . . .”

  Frank sticks the nail into the pile of paper clips again.

  “. . . we make the nail into a magnet!”

  Frank lifts up the nail, this time dragging a bunch of paper clips with it.

  “Magic!” says Watson.

  “No—magnet,” says Klink. “The electric current flowing through the wire produces a magnetic field around it. More wire makes a stronger field. So the electrified coiled wire makes a field just like a magnet.”

  Watson nods. “Magnetism from electricity.”

  “And now watch this!” says Frank.

  Frank coils a longer copper wire in many big loops. He tapes one end of the wire to the side of the metal base of a small flashlight bulb. He tapes the other end of the wire to the tip of the bulb base.

  “This bulb needs electricity to light up,” says Frank.

  “Right,” says Watson.

  Frank picks up a bar magnet. “If you move a magnet in and out of the coils of the copper wire, it moves the electrons in the wire . . .”

  Frank moves the magnet quickly in and out of the wire coils.

  The bulb lights.

  “. . . and it makes electricity!”

  “That is tooooo weird,” marvels Watson. “Magnetism can make electricity. And electricity can make magnetism. But I guess that’s right. ’Cause both are moving electrons around.”

  Frank jumps up from the lab bench. “And since Earth acts as a giant magnet, imagine how much electricity Earth could make. And imagine if we could tap into it anywhere. And shoot it out—like a static-electricity finger!”

  THE EVENING BREEZE BENDS THE TALL GRASS AT THE BASE OF the chain-link fence surrounding the Midville Wind Farm. The wind picks up, stirs leaves, bends branches, and pushes the giant fiberglass blades of a twenty-five-meter-tall white wind turbine into spinning motion.

  The wind whips across the ridge above the Midville Woods and quickly sets the whole long line of windmill propellers spinning.

  The spinning blades turn the shafts in the generators.

  The turning shafts force electrons to move in an electric current.

  Just inside the Midville Wind Farm fence, Mr. Chimp belts himself into the driver’s seat of his latest machine. It’s his own invention, the DemoMonster—with crushing jaws on a boom neck, and two extendable hammer arms.

  Mr. Chimp signs to Edison:

  “You are such an old lady, with your seat belts and safety helmets,” says Edison. But he buckles his seat belt.

  And it’s a good thing he does. Because Mr. Chimp stomps on the gas, jams the crusher boom forward with a jolt, and crumples the first turbine shaft in its steel jaws with a shriek of ripping metal and crack of exploding concrete base.

  Edison holds on to the sides of his seat, riding it like a bucking bronco.

  “My goodness,” says Edison.

  Mr. Chimp’s DemoMonster chomps and hammers and smashes and crashes one wind turbine after another.

  Edison smiles more than he ever has.

  “Oh my, oh my. Such destruction. No more electricity from this wind farm. Now that’s what I call Building Our Future.”

  Mr. Chimp nods. Mr. Chimp hoots. Mr. Chimp sends another towering wind turbine crashing to earth.

  KLANK BENDS THE LAST PIECE OF STEEL INTO PLACE.

  Klink wraps wiring to match a Tesla diagram.

  Frank locks the antenna into position.

  Watson drills another soda can with his peashooter.

  “Yes!” says Frank. He holds up his latest invention. “The antenna will draw magnetic energy from the Earth and pass it through the wire coils inside. Just like in our experiment.”

  “Right,” says Watson.

  “Which will move the electrons in the wire coils to the transformer.”

  “Check,” says Watson.

  “Which will shoot out of the fingertip transmitter. With no wires.”
>
  “Of course!” cheers Watson.

  “Hold this lightbulb and stand over on the other side of the lab.”

  Watson picks up the oversized lightbulb and walks to the other side of the lab. “Why do you want me to—”

  Frank aims the new invention at Watson.

  “Hey, wait! No! Not me! This could be hazardous to my health! Make Klink hold it!”

  Before Watson can move, Frank pulls the trigger. The lightbulb in Watson’s hand flickers, hums, and then pops on in a bright white glow.

  Watson stares at the bulb in his hand, which glows without being plugged into anything. “It . . . it works!”

  “Of course it does,” says Frank.

  “Hypothesis tested and confirmed,” adds Klink.

  Klank shakes his big vegetable-strainer head. “I did not think that was going to happen.”

  Frank points the invention at an unplugged clock. The hands spin to life.

  Frank electrifies a string of old Christmas-tree lights. They blink on and off.

  Frank starts up a radio, a blender, a heater, and a fan. All wirelessly.

  “Nice,” says Watson. “What do you call it?”

  Klink revs his vacuum motor. “It should obviously be called the Wireless Electromagnetic-Transmission Device. Because that is precisely what it is.”

  “Ooh, oooh,” says Klank. “You should call it . . . the Kooky Kootie Zapper!”

  “It’s a real electro-finger,” says Watson.

  Frank looks up. “Hey, that’s a perfect name, Watson. Can we use it?”

  Watson beams. He is thrilled to be part of Frank’s invention. “Of course.”

  “Great,” says Frank. “Now come on. Let’s take this thing out and show Midville some wireless electricity.”

  Watson pauses. “Uh, Frank? Maybe we should think this thing through. Maybe make a plan so we don’t get in trouble like we did last time. And the time before that. And the time before that.”