Rumpelstiltskin Does Particle
Physics - A Modern Tale
by Rebecca Carlson
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When the Lab Director asked the physicist about his daughter, the physicist was no less boastful than before! He said that his daughter was so clever, she could turn electrons into muons just by spinning them around in a cyclotron! The Lab Director was impressed, but he was not convinced. He ordered the physicist to call his daughter and have her come to see him.
When the physicist's daughter arrived, the lab director took her to a little trailer out on the parking lot. In it there was a small cyclotron, an old fashioned cathode ray tube, and a muon detector. The lab director said, "I want to see 400 trillion muons registered on that detector by morning, or I'll cut off your funding!" Then he shut the door and locked it.
The poor physicist's daughter sat down on the floor and began to release some of her hitherto suppressed anxiety. Being very clever with particle physics, she realized that it would be impossible for her to turn even one electron, to say nothing of 400 trillion electrons, into muons merely by spinning them around in a cyclotron!
But as she was emoting, a little man appeared at her side and said, "What is the matter, my dear?"
"The lab director has told me that I must spin a whole 400 trillion electrons into muons, or he'll cut off my funding!" she explained.
"Why, that is not such a hard task, for one who knows how," the little man winked slyly.
"Really?" the girl asked, "Pardon me, but do you know anything about particle physics?"
"Look, lady, do you want my help or not?" the little man snapped.
Although she figured this fellow probably didn't have a Ph.D., she was at her wits end, "Okay, I'm sorry. What do we have to do?"
"It's a little tricky, my dear. But I'm willing to turn 400 trillion electrons into muons for you, if you'll give me something in return."
"I have a brand new CRC here with me," she pulled the volume out of her sizeable purse.
"That will do just fine," the little man said as he took it. He then sat down and turned on the cathode ray tube, aligned it with the cyclotron and the muon detector, and got to work. Much to the physicist's daughter's amazement, the muon detector began to register muons at an incredible rate! She soon fell asleep to the hum of the detector; but the little man worked all night long.
The next morning, she awoke to the sound of the Lab Director unlocking the door. The little man was gone, but the muon detector read 400 trillion muons exactly. When the Lab Director came in he was delighted and amazed! With thoughts of one of his lab employees snagging a Nobel Prize, he congratulated the girl and told her to go home and get some rest. But the Lab Director still wasn't completely convinced. He determined to make another test the following week.
The next week the Lab Director called our heroine into his office once again.
"We're all very impressed with the work you did last week," the Lab Director told her, "but the muons you produced last time were only enough to keep one little flashlight burning for one night. We'd like to see if you can make 350 quintillion muons this time. That would provide enough energy to keep our whole lab running for an entire day!"
"But sir..." she began.
"Oh, don't worry! I realize you were limited by the poor equipment we furnished you with for your last experiments. I have something better for you this time."
Not giving her a chance to protest, the Lab Director led her to a warehouse. Inside the warehouse was a larger cyclotron, a fancy new cathode ray tube, and a very sophisticated muon detector.
"Now it should be no problem for you to make 350 quintillion muons before sunrise tomorrow morning, but as I said before," the Lab Director smiled, "If you don't, I'll cut off your funding." He went out and locked the door behind him.
This time the physicist's daughter was feeling even more victimized than before. Overwhelmed by the sheer impossibility of the task, and infuriated by the manipulative actions of the Lab Director, she was considering making a career change. In the midst of this inward struggle, the little man appeared once more.
"Good evening my dear! I see you're in a little fix again," the man observed.
"Don't patronize me, shorty!" she snapped, completely forgetting her manners, "If I hadn't asked for your help last time I wouldn't be in this little fix."
"Ah, yes, but you would have lost your funding," he reminded her.
As losing her funding was becoming less important to her by the minute, she was about to come back with an angry retort. Then she realized that if the little man could do the trick again, all she had to do was watch carefully to learn how to do it herself. Obviously if an experiment can be reproduced once, it could be reproduced again! The aspiring young particle physicist decided to play along once more. Looking penitent she asked, "Do you think you can turn 350 quintillion electrons into muons?"
"Simple!" the little man laughed, "But will I?"
"Well, I'll give you my new Hewlett Packard programmable graphing calculator," she offered humbly.
"Hmmmm... does it have expandable memory?"
"Oh, yes, and I already have Tetris on it," she pulled out the calculator and handed it to him.
"It's a deal," the little man grinned. Once again he got to work, and with the greatest of ease he began to spin electrons into muons. This time, however, the girl took careful notes of the positioning and settings on each instrument in hopes that she could reproduce the experiment herself. Once she had made a thorough record of the little man's techniques, she stuffed her lab book back in her large purse and went to sleep.
The next morning the Lab Director was more delighted than ever. And this time the physicist's daughter was eager to get another opportunity to demonstrate her muon spinning skills. Just as she hoped, one week later the lab director called her into his office.
"We want to do one more test before we publicize your discoveries." the lab director told her. "This time we have state of the art equipment for you to use. It's set up in the basement of our top secret particle research facility. And this time, if you succeed, we can guarantee you a high paying position at this laboratory for the rest of your life, as well as enough funding for a small army of graduate students to assist you in your research. Of course, if you fail..."
"You'll have to cut off my funding," she completed the sentence for him. "How many muons would you like this time?"
"Let's do something impressive. How about one mole of muons. That's about enough muons to supply electricity to the entire city for a month!"
And so that evening the physicist's daughter once again found herself locked in a room with several large, technical looking machines. But these were such modern versions of the cathode ray tube, cyclotron, and muon detector that it took her an hour and a half just to figure out how to turn them on. When she went to her lab book and looked at her notes, they were of very little help. She tried to align the equipment and enter the settings she had recorded earlier on the computer, but by midnight she had not produced one single muon.
Realizing that time was running out, and seeing that her dreams of becoming a life time staff member at the lab were fading fast, she put her head down on the computer keyboard and began to weep.
"Don't do that!" said a familiar voice at her elbow, "You'll wreck the keyboard." "What?" the girl sat up in surprise, "Oh! Am I glad to see you! I can't seem to get this to work!"
"Of course not," the little man scowled at her lab notebook, which lay open on the desk beside her. "You've completely neglected the theory involved."
"It's no good if you just make the muons again," the girl sniffled, "If the experiment can't be reproduced by anyone it will be the end of my scientific career! You remember what happened to the last physicists who claimed to have produced cold fusion," she shuddered.
"So what will you give me if I tell you how I'm making the muons?"
The physicist's daughter looked through her purse, "I really don't have anything left," she admitted sadly.
"Tell you what," the little man grinned wickedly, "If you get the Nobel Prize for this, you have to give me all the credit."
"Fair enough," the girl said, thinking how ridiculous it was that anyone would believe this little man had been the one who had developed the muon spinning technique. Little people who appear and disappear in the middle of the night are usually not considered trustworthy by members of the scientific community.
So the little man programmed the computer to produce one mole of muons before sunrise, then carefully explained the theoretical basis for his method to the physicist's daughter. Being very clever with particle physics, she caught on quickly, although she thought his scientific rigor was somewhat lacking. No matter. Soon she would have plenty of time and plenty of graduate students to work out all the rough spots in the theory. By sunrise she understood the process well enough to reproduce it, and the detector registered a whole mole of muons besides.
The little man vanished just as the door opened and the Lab Director walked in. He was overjoyed at the number of muons that had been produced. He sent a proclamation throughout the whole country declaring that the physicist's daughter had found a new source of muons that made cold fusion a practical energy source. She was given a full time position at the lab, and was soon working with her graduate students on a marketable version of her muon spinner to be attached to cold fusion reactors all over the world. She published several papers, and as other scientists confirmed her results she was praised and honored by all. In all of this excitement she completely forgot about the little man.
One day, three years after the first announcement of her results, she received notification that she had been chosen to receive a Nobel Prize! The ceremony where she was to formally accept it was some time off so she would have plenty of time to write an acceptance speech. Just as she was about to call the lab director with the happy news, the little man appeared at her side.
"What are you doing here?" she gasped.
"You forgot the promise you made to me!" the little man stomped angrily, "You've won the Nobel Prize in physics, and now you have to turn it over to me."
"Ha! How can you prove that you did the research before I did?" the girl challenged him.
The little man grinned and pulled out an obscure journal of particle physics published in Greenland, "I've got proof." he sneered, "I published a paper describing my technique a whole ten years before you even started working on it. Of course no one paid attention to it back then. Bad fairies usually don't get very far in the scientific world."
The girl took the journal and hastily flipped through it. Sure enough there was an article describing the very technique she had been using, "This is terrible!" she cried.
"If you don't turn the Nobel Prize over to me, I'll take you to court and sue you for fraud."
"But what about my career? What about my research? What ever will become of me?" the physicist's daughter began to sob.
"All right," the little man said, "I'll give you one last chance. If you can guess..."
"Your name?" the girl looked up hopefully.
"No, that's to easy. It's on the paper. You have to guess my e-mail address. You can have three guesses, and I'll give you three days to think about it. If you can't guess by then, you have to make a public announcement that I was the one who developed the technique of spinning electrons into muons."
"And if I can guess, you'll let me have the credit, and you won't bother me ever again?"
"I promise." the little man said grouchily. "I'll be back in three days." and with that he vanished.
"An e-mail address! How hard can that be to find?" she thought to herself.
Twenty four hours later she had made little progress. She had discovered that the article she had seen had been written by a Dr. Rumpelstiltskin, whose other publications included a method for turning straw into gold, a process by which persons could quantum mechanically tunnel through locked doors, and a formula for fat reducing diet pills. More and more determined not to let this unheard-of crackpot get the credit for a Nobel Prize, the physicist's daughter had searched the internet all night for any mention of Dr. Rumpelstiltskin. There was none to be found.
She called her graduate students in and ordered them to look as well. But with all their efforts, they could only determine that Dr. Rumpelstiltskin had not gotten his degree from any known universities, neither was he on the staff at any known university or laboratory that had a link to the internet.
On the morning of the third day, in complete desperation, the physicist's daughter decided to go and tell the Lab Director the whole story in hopes that he could help. She went into his office and tearfully related the whole sad tale, from her first night in the trailer to the conversation she had with Dr. Rumpelstiltskin after the call from the Nobel Prize committee. The Lab Director looked very sympathetic. When she was done, he calmly said, "I can see you've been under a lot of pressure lately. I know you enjoy your work, but sometimes it becomes necessary to take a little vacation once in a while. Why don't you go on a nice cruise next week, and when you come back I have a good friend I'd like you to meet down in the psychology department."
"Thank you," the physicist's daughter said coldly, "I just might do that." She stomped out of the Lab Director's office. It was obvious that he wasn't going to be any help.
When she got back to her lab one of her graduate students was waiting to talk to her.
"I was going through news groups last night and I found one I had never seen before called alt.bad.fairies.chat so I thought I'd take a look. I have a printout of one of the posts here that you might be interested in."
The physicist's daughter took the printout and began to read:
}} puck@midsummer.bard.uk wrote:
}} I decided to put some government
}} bonds under the same curse that I had
}} used on Fafnir's gold. It was really
}} a riot. You should have been there.
}}
} andvari@siegfried.no wrote:
} That's nothing. I decided to raise a little
} contention at the U.S. congressional ball
} last week so I turned not just one, but
} three people into animals; a mule, a
} rabbit, and an emu. Then I made the
} Pro Tem of the senate fall in love with
} the House Speaker's wife. You've never
} seen so much chaos in either of the last
} two millennia.
}
> Well, I've got one to top that! You fellows
> won't believe this, but I'm going to be
> awarded a Nobel Prize! Yep, if this
> physicist I told you about can't guess my
> e-mail address by tomorrow night she has
> to turn the prize over to me! }:)
----------------------------------------------
Rumpelstiltskin
stilts@grimm.de
Fair is foul and foul is fair.
Hover through the fog and filthy air.
-- Shakespeare's Macbeth
The physicist's daughter thanked the
graduate student and waited eagerly for
the appearance of the little man. That
evening he materialized and declared that
her time was up.
"So is your e-mail address
rumple@lit.com?" she asked.
"No!"
"How about kin@muon.ulac.edu?"
"No no no!!"
"Then maybe stilts@grimm.de?"
"What?"
"Stilts@grimm.de," the physicist's
daughter repeated.
"You found it!" the little man was
furious. He hopped up and down angrily.
"No fair! No fair!" he shouted. He
became so angry that he vanished in a
puff of smoke and never was heard from
again. In fact, when the physicist's
daughter got back from her cruise she
could find no trace of Dr. Rumpelstiltskin
or any of his publications. She concluded
that her many long hours in the
laboratory must have had some adverse
effects on her mental health.
After accepting the Nobel Prize she
gave lectures for a year and then quit her
job at the lab. She was already getting
more than enough money off of her
invention. She went back to school, got
a degree in recreation management, and
lived happily ever after.
Special thanks to Dr. Stuart Taylor for his help with muon catalyzed fusion. Also, thanks to Russel Carlson for information about newsgroup posts and e-mail information.