Ping Pong Balls

Well , Larry and I talked tonight. First good talk since Saturday. As we talked I thought of Don Herbert - " Mr. Wizard ". The coolest thing I ever saw was Don Herbert toss a ping pong ball onto a ping pong table, covered with mouse traps. .

This is 1959 folks, and I was about to drag our PhilCo TV to my 6th grade class in my long forgotten red wagon. Just so we could see all those very early rockets explode in black & white.

" Mr. Wizard " was explaining nuclear fission to all us baby boomers, and he had baited all those mouse traps with more ping pong balls.
Imagine a ping pong table covered , completely carpeted with mouse traps. EACH BAITED with 1 ping pong ball.

So Don tells us about splitting the atom. Why it works in reactors, & why it works in the bomb.
Then he tossed one ball onto that table, what follows next isn't a bunch of dominoes falling down .
It's pure insight into a nuclear chain reaction.

50 years later, as I listened to my friend Larry , I was just thinking of all those ping pong balls going everywhere.

One of our ping pong balls -

Paul Aguilar's Images of from 7-11-09.