We Proved Einstein's Theory of Relativity!

 

My late life-long friend Sam went to Georgia Tech.  I remember him wearing the yellow Tech cap proclaiming “THE HELL WITH GEORGIA”.  He said it was pretentious, but it would have been more pretentious to go against tradition.  Sam never went to a sporting event, he did not like crowds.

But he took his studies at Tech serious and was always telling me of experiments they were conducting in his classes.  One they mailed instruments all over the United States to measure how the Postal Service handled the objects.  Some was thrown as far as 50 feet, two or three was broken, being thrown so far, and two got lost in the mails.

One Saturday morning he came to visit.  He had a pack of Bluehorse Notebook paper.  He said we were going to do an experiment.  We drove to the Cartersville side of Allatoona Dam.  We walked the Stairs all the way to the top.  He said he west wind should be gushing down he Etowah Valley, just over the Etowah River, hit the dam and to upwards like climbing the smooth cement always to the top.

We made some paper airplains and threw them over the dam.  Up, up they went, and when they began to fall downward in a circular motion, the wind would catch them and send them back up.  I think we had about a dozen paper airplanes above the dam dogfighting.

Another time he dropped by to show me a new snazzy convertible he just bought.  It was used but in vry good shaped and shiny clean.  Not a scratch on it.  That was the kind of showy car Sam would claim was pretentious.

We bought some beer and were riding around talking with the top down and Sam said his class were studying Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.  I, trying to appear like an intellectual asked him what was the “Theory of Relativity”?

He told me in the simplest form it was something like this:  If you are standing in a moving bus and jumped up you would land on the same spot on the bus you jumped up from.  However, if when you jumped up the bus suddenly stopped your body is still moving whether the bus is or not, so you would crash into the bus’s dash.

I said, “Lets have an experiment!”  We out diving on a Paulding County back-roads near the Dallas Drag Strip and a drive-in theater.

Sam sped up the car.  I took my almost full can of beer and said “ready.’

At the same time Sam slammed on the brakes I flung the beer can straight up in the air.

WHOMP!!!

The beer can put a dent in the front hood.

We proved Einstein’s Theory of Relativity!”