Headline: Three generations of the Dinsmore family work together in the name of science.

Question: How many mad scientists does it take to find out if different sized balls fall at the same speed?
Answer: In our case three plus lots of mismatched technology.

Our grandson, Patrick, is doing his science fair project over the mid winter break. He chose as his hypothesis that different sized balls fall at the same speed because of gravity. Now he has to prove it. Grandfather, Son and Grandson all put on their thinking caps and started tossing around ideas about how we could measure the effect. The stopwatch was quickly ruled out; none of us could time it that precisely. The grandfather person reminisced about physics class and a super accurate spark timing device that burned holes in a strip of adding machine tape attached to the falling weight. Alas and alack the technology was not available to us. Next we tried the digital camera that can take short video clips. That brought us to an interesting new problem; modern technology is too smart. To save space the camera only records a new picture when it notices something has changed. We discovered the camera only recorded a new photo every second or third frame. We tried to fool the camera by placing a floor fan in the field and putting a strip of duct tape on one blade. The fan was too speedy even at the slowest speed. Ah Ha there is a ceiling fan in the master bedroom. We briefly thought about removing the fan and jury-rigging it on the living room floor and supplying the electricity by poking the wires into the socket of the drop cord. Then we pictured in our minds eye the Mother-person arriving home and noticing her beloved fan wopping away in the middle of the living room floor and decided against that option. Well being the skilled scientific thinking team that we are, we hit upon the ingenious plan of bringing an image of the fan to the experiment. Soon there was a mirror propped in the stairway and a sheet of red paper taped to one blade of the fan. By now the living room looked like a cyclone had struck. We had the furniture pushed back to make a safe landing zone. Patrick was stationed at the landing at the top of the stairway. Grandpa was cameraman and Dad was retrieving balls and tossing them back up the stairs.

When the gals returned to the scene we were starting to get the furniture back in place and Patrick was busy counting frames on the computer. He was able to find out that the camera records 25 frames as the stopwatch changes by one second, and the ball falls sixteen feet from the banister of the stairway in about 25 frames. So far the team has not repealed the law of gravity, but we do know that it comes in jumps and starts. Pictures never lie. Isn’t modern technology wonderful?

Judy and I send you greetings from frosty Gilroy California, where we are visiting Glen and Barb and their three sons, Cody, Patrick and Bryce.

Love to all, Gary and Judy.

P.S. Today is our forty first anniversary. We have spent the last year and a half in a thirty four foot RV and we are still together and loving every minute.

We do have to end on a sad note, however. Judy’s brother, Lloyd Starr, passed away in Sequim Washington Saturday, February 18, 2006. He continued to enjoy life to the end, in spite of limitations that emphysema put on him. He enjoyed hand creating model trucks and construction equipment from wood. He is survived by his three sisters, Sonja, Genaveve and Judy and their families.

Gary