Jeffrey Lewis
Professor at the Middlebury Institute & host of the Arms Control Wonk Podcast.
- nother good Garwin story is @matthewbunn.bsky.social;s to tell, but he told it to me and I fact checked it. It involves a Wham-O Super Ball.
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View full threadAnd it has an illustration and then an all-timer of a footnote: "1. This was first demonstrated to me by L.W. Alvarez with a Wham-O Super Ball."
- L.W. Alvarez is Nobel Prize-winning physicist Luis Alvarez. The two of them were playing with a Wham-O Super Ball and got a publication in the American Journal of Physics out of it.
- Garwin once explained to Bunn how the conservation of kinetic energy might allow a certain type of ball to return after being bounced on the floor and the underside of a table.
- A few days later, Bunn received a paper in the mail entitled, “Kinematics of an Ultraelastic Rough Ball” (American Journal of Physics 37:1, January 1969, pp.88-92) by Richard L. Garwin.
- Ok, my favorite Garwin story; it's 2008 and I am in Qingdao, China. I am recovering from a serious bout of food poisoning. I got sick in Beijing and contemplated going to the hospital and/or home. I also told the organizers I might miss the meeting.
- I rally and fly to Qingdao. I am feeling much better but I look like death warmed over. At a coffee break, RLG walks over: Me: "You are a valuable member of the community." RLG: "Gee, thanks."
- RLG: "I thought you might want to know. In case you die." Me: "Really, I am feeling much better." RLG: "Well, I wanted to tell you. In case you die." Walks away.
