"Jerry Oltion - The Miracle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Oltion Jerry)

"It's starting to fade," one of the reporters said after a minute or so, and
sure enough, in another minute the discharge had dwindled to a faint glow and an
occasional spark at the tip of the wire. Dr. Richards nodded to Greg, who backed
away, and then he tossed the wire aside and stepped backward himself.

Deprived of its lightning rod, the bush flickered a couple of times, like a
guttering candle, then quieted again.

The hilltop still buzzed with the shouts of the angry, confused mob, which had
come to a halt a quarter mile or so below. The shouts grew louder when people
realized that the discharge had stopped, and the leading edge began moving back
uphill.

"Uh-oh," Greg said.

"Quick, jump up and down!" Dr. Richards said. Without waiting for anyone else to
start, he began hopping up and down like a kid on a pogo stick. His feet slapped
the ground with each jump. Greg and the reporters stared at him as if he'd just
lost his mind, but when the bush burst forth with another shower of sparks a few
seconds later, they all began leaping and hopping like maniacs.

They were still hopping, and the bush was still crackling wildly, when the news
helicopter came to rescue them a few minutes later.

"It's the piezoelectric effect," Dr. Richards said. He was standing before one
of the student workbenches in his teaching lab, reporters and camera crews from
dozens of papers and TV stations surrounding him. On the table stood a screw
vise with a finger-size crystal in its jaws, and a wire running from the top of
the crystal up to a heavy iron ring stand. An insulated clamp held the wire so
its tip was a half inch or so from the metal.

"When you squeeze a quartz crystal," Dr. Richards said, turning the handle of
the vise, "it generates electricity." Sure enough, a spark leaped from the wire
to the iron stand. "And if you vibrate it, you get a pulse of current each time
the crystal flexes." Dr. Richards wiggled the handle back and forth, and the
spark popped each time.

"How does that account for what we saw on the hilltop today?" the woman reporter
who had been there asked.

Dr. Richards said, "Quartz is one of the most common elements in rock. It occurs
naturally in large crystals, sometimes huge crystals inside cooling volcanos,
which is what all these hills around here once were. It's very likely there's a
big quartz deposit inside Pilan Hill, one which resonates to the vibrations of
people jogging or even just milling around on the surface."

Another reporter asked, "But why now? That hill's been there for millions of
years, and nobody has ever seen it do this before."