Science, one step at a time

#Saturdayscenes

“Did you know that ‘centrifugal force’ is something of a misnomer?” Ariana queried languidly from her hammock. The stylish, raised heels of her boots jutted into the air, and her chestnut hair spilled luxuriously over a bed of pillows. She mostly stared at the dark, stormy, spring weather outside, but every so often she glanced at a large, barrel-shaped object that vibrated ominously.

Dorian jotted some notes in a notebook. It was the first run of the centrifuge, and he wanted to try to improve its operation in the future. If he could just get it running more smoothly, maybe the sounds it made wouldn’t give him visions of his wife with a stray bolt lodged in her head. The centrifuge was by far the most dangerous piece of equipment in the lab, and he was acutely aware of that fact. He raised a sandy eyebrow at Ariana. “Oh? Did you not recruit me to help you construct a centrifuge? Isn’t the idea that centrifugal force is moving the different particles toward the outside of our wheel at different rates, allowing us to separate them? What are we doing, then?”

“We’re making use of inertia - the tendency of objects not to change their motion. We apply torque to the wheel to get it moving. Then the tendency of the samples is to keep moving in a straight line. That’s just a consequence of an object having mass; there’s no force involved. It’s almost like the opposite of a force - what a force has to work against to get anything done. But the framework of the wheel keeps pulling the samples into a circular path - applying a centripetal force. That’s where forces come into this, and different objects resist the change in their motion to different extents.”

The centrifuge quieted down enough that Dorian felt safe gently pulling a lever and gradually applying the brakes. He smirked at Ariana. “ ‘Entropics’ is a misnomer. ‘Centrifugal force’ is a misnomer. Don’t you scientists get anything right?”

Ariana swung her legs over the hammock, stood up, put on a long, white apron, and stuck her tongue out at Dorian. “Well, we call things what they look like at first. Then we find out what they really are. Or at least we come closer.” She lifted the lid of the now-quiet drum, collected two glass test tubes, and held them up to the entropic lamp in the middle of the room. One of them contained three bands: a dark red band at the bottom, a white band in the middle, and a yellow band at the top. The other contained those three bands plus a small, dark band below them all.

Her lips parted in surprise, and the blood drained out of them. “There’s heavy, black sludge in my blood,” she whispered, “but not in yours.” Their eyes met and widened. She licked her lips and took a deep breath. “Better find out what it is.” She set the test tubes on a rack, attached a thin glass pipette to a rubber suction bulb, then positioned the tip above the abnormal sample. Her breathing was shallow, and her hand shook a little.

Dorian gently rested a hand on her shoulder. “Are you being stubborn? Take a rest if you need to.”

She shook her head. “No, I don’t know how stable this fraction is. I want to get a look at it before it has a chance to break down. Just a look, then I’ll rest.” She took another deep breath to steady herself, dipped the pipette tip into the top layer of liquid, and carefully drew it out. As she transferred it to another test tube, she chatted with Dorian. “Using these things always makes me feel like a hummingbird - dipping my little proboscis into a flower full of nectar.” She laughed as she worked, but it was a thin, tense laugh. Eventually each layer had its own test tube; she took the unknown, dark layer to the microscope.

Dorian tried to occupy himself by making adjustments to the centrifuge, but his eyes kept wandering back to Ariana. He tried to detect some clue about what she saw, but her face was as impassive as it was intent. Finally she grimaced, reached into a drawer, pulled out a device that looked like a crossbow, and used it to fire a bean bag at Dorian. It hit him on the shoulder, but he was too busy protecting the more sensitive region between his legs to worry about that. “What was that for?” he demanded.

“I’m disappointed and frustrated.” She held his gaze for a few seconds, then let out a much more genuine laugh. She glanced at the area shielded by Dorian’s hands and grinned. “I see what your priorities are.”

He straightened up and dropped his hands. “I remember last time.”

“Well, I’m not going to accomplish anything else here today. It’s time to put my feet up and have some tea.”

Dorian brought some tea to her couch and delivered it with a kiss; they drank it together. Once Ariana had had a chance to relax, he asked, “What did you see in the microscope?”

She shook her head dismissively. “Nothing. Whatever that black slime is made of, it’s too small to show up as anything more than tiny black specks. Which I didn’t expect at all.”

“Why is that?” he asked. “The world is full of things that are too small to see with a microscope.”

“Yes, but whatever it is, its fraction was at the very bottom of the sample. For something so small to deposit there, it needs to be much more dense than the normal components of blood.” She looked pleadingly at Dorian. “Those things are inside me, and I don’t know what they are.” Her eyes twitched downward, and her fingers fidgeted with the lip of her teacup in agitation. “Somehow, I need to get a look at it!”