The question, Scientists shown a fake anti-gravity device to motivate them to build the real thing, reminded me of another short story I read back in highschool (somewhere around the 1990ish timeframe) but likely older. It featured an engineer walking down the street where he sees a street vendor seemingly demonstrating toy saucers that float independent on any other force. He buys one, to figure out how it works, whereupon the salesman reveals the trick, a very thin and nearly invisible thread. The engineer laughs it off and takes it home to demonstrate to his wife. However, he finds that the system only works if he has the toy saucer turned on. Otherwise, the thread snaps under the weight of the saucer.
He starts trying to figure out why that might be the case whereupon the story cuts back to the salesman, who is talking to someone else:
The twist seemed incredibly clever to me at the time. What engineer could pass up the chance to solve such an interesting problem?
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire