Duncan C. Blanchard The Lighter Side of Science Research
In several other articles on this site, I have quoted, referred to, or reviewed the work of Duncan
Blanchard, particularly with regard to his two outstanding books: From Raindrops to Volcanoes
and The Snowflake Man. I have not had the pleasure of meeting Duncan face-to-face, but we
have had a number of correspondences over the past few years, and he has helped me
immeasurably in my writing on cloud and precipitation processes and on Wilson A. Bentley, for
whom we both have a deep interest.
In one of his letters, Blanchard enclosed a manuscript he had written entitled: "The Lighter Side of a Life in Science." Several of the stories I found particularly interesting to myself and hopefully to my readers. With his permission, I give you a few of those stories below. If you have been a research scientist or engineer in your life, you will likely have a chuckle at Blanchard's accounts and then recall some of your lighter moments in research. If you are not a researcher or are a youth intending on a career in science, I offer these as proof that science has a funny as well as a fun side to it. I will keep my remarks to a minimum but where I add a point or two, I will distinguish my comments by printing them in blue.
Duncan Blanchard: "I was in the science game, atmospheric science in particular, for about forty years. Most of that time was spent either in the laboratory sweating over experiments that sometimes took months to plan and carry out, or out-of-doors doing further experiments to see if the predictions of those laboratory experiments set right with Mother Nature. Sometimes they did not. Defeated, I limped back to the laboratory for more research. As the old saying goes, it was back to the drawing board!
This was serious stuff. Nature grudgingly gives up her secrets about how she goes about her business of keeping harmony among the complex interactions of the atmosphere with the earth and the oceans. Yet with all this seriousness, the struggle to understand the natural world had its lighter moments. I found it in the hilarious situations that sometimes resulted from the all-too-human misunderstandings that can occur when others do not understand what you are doing. One should grab these moments, relish them, see the humor in them, for they are the spice in the everyday life of a scientist. Science is too serious to be taken seriously!
I'm going to tell you about some of these hilarious situations. Most happened to me, a few to
other people. I began my career in science in 1947 on Project Cirrus at the research laboratory of
the General Electric Company in Schenectady, New York. A year earlier, project scientists had
discovered that both dry ice and silver iodide could be used to seed supercooled clouds to bring
about the formation of snow crystals. The crystals collided with others to form snowflakes which
would melt to produce raindrops if the air below the clouds was warmer than thirty-two degrees
Fahrenheit [zero Celsius]. Cloud seeding experiments were well underway by the time I joined
Cirrus. The group leader was the noted scientist Dr. Irving Langmuir, winner of the 1931 Nobel
Prize in chemistry.
Suspending Water Drops
For my research project, Langmuir asked me to build a vertical wind tunnel, within which the air
moved upward at exactly the same speed that large raindrops fall. Large water drops could then
be suspended in the upward-moving air and studied at will. Langmuir wanted me to find out all I
could about large water drops in free fall, how they oscillate, what shape they take, and how big
they could get before breaking up. I sweated it out for several weeks, trying to build a successful
tunnel, and by trial and error finally succeeded. [for more on such experiments, see "Raindrops, So Many Raindrops."]
With the wind tunnel problem solved, I started taking pictures of the drops. I thought this would
be the easy part, but to my surprise portions of the drop acted like a mirror and reflected light
right back into the camera lens. It was like looking directly into the headlights on high beam of
an oncoming car at night. Much of the shape of the drop was hidden behind the glare of the
bright star-shaped spot of light on the photograph. I didn't know how to solve this problem until
one day I mentioned it to Vincent Schaefer, the discoverer of dry-ice cloud seeding. Vince told
me that since all natural waters contain a tiny amount of sodium chloride, all I had to do was add
a small pinch of silver nitrate to my tap water. That would react with the salt to produce silver
chloride, a milky-white colloidal suspension that would reflect the light from all over the drop
and make the photography easy. Vince was right. It did. All my photographs came out
beautifully. But unlike the artists' drawings of raindrops, there was not a tear-drop shape among
them! The drops were shaped like falling hamburger buns that vibrated as they fell like a bowl of
jelly. [for more, see "Raindrops, So Many Raindrops."]
As soon as the General Electric News Bureau heard of these photographs, ever eager to publicize
the glory of the Company, they had hundreds of copies made, attached brief descriptions, and
sent them out to numerous newspapers and magazines. Some appeared in Newsweek. Soon
letters to the editor started coming in. One reader said he wasn't fooled by those pictures. The
drops were not water, as was explained in the story, but drops of milk. Newsweek replied:
"We checked with the General Electric Company and were told that the drops were indeed
water, photographed by a high-speed stroboscopic camera which flooded each droplet with a
large amount of light. In reproduction it was necessary to use a screen to hold the white in the
picture of the drop, thus accounting for the milky-white appearance."
Whoa! That bit about the high-speed strobe light was correct, but what was this nonsense about
"a screen to hold the white in the picture of the drop?" I wrote to Newsweek and said that no
screen was involved. I explained how I got the white in the drop from the silver chloride
suspension. A Newsweek editor replied:
"We checked with the General Electric Company and were told that the drops were indeed
water, photographed by a high-speed stroboscopic camera which flooded each droplet with a
large amount of light. In reproduction it was necessary to use a screen to hold the white in the
picture of the drop, thus accounting for the milky-white appearance. With all these facts, I have
no doubt you are acquainted."
At this point I doubted that the Newsweek editor could ever become acquainted with the true
facts. What could I do? I gave up and never wrote again.
No More Tears
A vice-president of the Pennzoil Company, a major producer of motor oil, saw the Newsweek
story. He wrote me and said that raindrops may be shaped like hamburger buns, but falling drops
of oil are tear-shaped. For years the Pennzoil Company had a large tear-shaped drop of oil
prominently displayed on the outside of their quart-sized cans of oil. Clearly, he had a company
symbol to defend and wasn't about to let some upstart young scientist say it wasn't true.
I bought a can of Pennzoil motor oil and tried suspending a drop in the wind tunnel. In my first
few attempts the air speed in the tunnel was too high and the oil drops flew upward to splat on
the ceiling of the lab. I had to learn better housekeeping! I lowered the air speed in the tunnel
and was able to suspend a large drop of motor oil. Was it tear-shaped? Not at all. Because it had
a lower surface tension than that of water, the drop spread out to look just like a thick pancake.
And because of its higher viscosity, the drop had no oscillations or vibrations. It just sat there
quietly as it fell through the upward moving air.
I took a picture of the pancake-shaped oil drop and sent it to the vice-president. I never heard
from him again. I suppose that photograph was classified top secret by the company. After all,
who would ever buy a quart of Pennzoil motor oil if a large picture of a pancake appeared on the
outside of the can?
Bubbles and Air Currents
One of the scientists on Project Cirrus was Bernard Vonnegut, the discoverer of sliver iodide
cloud seeding. Bernie was always bubbling over with ideas, many of which could be tested with
simple equipment. He had built several gadgets to measure the chemical properties of particles
in the air flowing by the laboratory. The intake for one of these devices was stuck out the
window on the windward side of the lab. Bernie wanted to know how the air flowed over the lab.
Did it form eddies? If so, what size? He had an idea how to test this and asked me to help him.
He went to a five-and-ten-cent store and bought a bubble pipe and a jar of bubble solution. He
walked slowly up and down in front of the lab, continuously blowing hundreds of bubbles. I
stood at the end of the lab in a position to see the bubbles as they left Bernie's bubble pipe and
move with the air up the side of the lab and over the top. Sparkling in the sunlight, they were
easily seen and revealed the eddies in the air.
On the hot summer day that we did the bubble experiment, dozens of construction workers in
hard hats and stripped to the waist were busily digging ditches and laying pipe not far from
where we were. But Bernie, in his bow tie and suit coat, kept blowing bubbles and paid little
attention to the many workers who looked upon this scene with complete bewilderment. I must
have added to their confusion when I pointed upward to the bubbles and hollered to Bernie,
"They're moving nicely over the top of the lab and picking up eddies toward the back," and
made some quick notes on a small pad. I wondered what the workers were thinking. Quite likely
they doubted our sanity, and concluded that while one doesn't have to be crazy to be a scientist,
it sure helps.
Sea Salt and Spider Webs
For seventeen years I worked at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod,
Massachusetts. One of the interesting scientific puzzles my colleague, Alfred Woodcock, and I
were trying to solve was a possible connection between bubbles in the sea and the formation of
rain. We knew that the tiny droplets ejected into the air when the bubbles burst were carried by
winds high up into the atmosphere. Though most of the water might evaporate from the droplets,
particles of sea salt were left behind. We guessed that these particles would be carried into the
clouds by updrafts, and being hygroscopic would absorb water vapor and grow large enough to
fall. By sweeping up the smaller cloud droplets in their path, they would grow large enough to
fall out of the cloud as raindrops. [For more on this topic, see from "Sea Froth to Raindrops."]
We wanted to study how the tiny droplets of seawater grew smaller when the relative humidity
was low and finally change into sea-salt particles. To do this, we decided to suspend the droplets
in the air with a minimum amount of disturbance from the support. We had seen the necklace of
tiny water droplets strung along a spider's web in early morning fogs, and decided that the thread
from a spider would do the job. To get the smallest diameter thread possible we needed a small
spider, one not more than a millimeter in size.
I remember one summer's morning when I was on my hands and knees on the small lawn in
front of the main building of the Oceanographic Institution with my head almost touching the
grass, while my hands slowly pulled apart blades of grass. I was on a hunt for these tiny spiders.
Large ones were easy to see, but the small ones blended in with the grass undergrowth. Suddenly
I became conscious of people talking. Woods Hole is a mecca for tourists in the summer, and
several were now standing on the sidewalk not more than a few yards from me. I was too busy
searching for those elusive tiny spiders to pay much attention to the tourists, but I was aware that
several groups of tourists slowed down to watch me as they passed the Oceanographic. No doubt
they, like the workmen at the General Electric Research Laboratory years earlier, concluded that
one doesn't have to be crazy to be a scientist but it sure helps.
In the lab we'd wind about ten turns of spider thread around a large paper clip. This was easily
done by placing the spider on the clip and then tapping it lightly with a finger. The spider,
deciding that life might be safer and more peaceful elsewhere, will jump off the frame. But not
wanting to burn its bridges behind it, it'll attach a fine thread to the clip. Down this thread to the
floor it'll go, letting out more thread behind it. When the spider got about halfway to the floor,
we'd start turning the clip to wind the fine thread around it.
One day I was working with a small spider with drag-stripping credentials that streamed out
thread behind it far faster than I could wind the thread on the clip. It made it to the floor and
scampered away. As there were several experiments we wanted to do that day, and this was the
only spider we had in the lab, I got on my hands and knees on the floor and looked all over for it.
At that point, a new secretary, who was not yet used to the ways of scientists, entered the room.
With a startled look, she asked what on earth I was doing. Still on the floor, and peering intently
under desks and chairs, I replied, "I'm looking for my spider. It's run away." She said something
in a weak, low voice and fled. At least she could have helped me look for my spider. I never did
find it.
Only God Can Make It Rain?
In the 1950s and 60s, in an effort to find out if giant sea-salt particles in the sub-tropical
atmosphere provided the nuclei for the formation of raindrops, Al Woodcock and I made several
trips to Hawaii. We measured raindrop sizes deep in the rain forests behind Hilo, where it rains
nearly every day, and collected sea-salt particles in the air over the sea as it approached the rain
forests. One day we were on a flight from Honolulu to Hilo. The planes were slow in those days,
and they flew low, weaving their way around the trade wind clouds. It was early in the morning
and there were plenty of seats. Wanting to carefully observe the clouds, Al took a window seat in
front of me. Peering intently out the window, moving his head this way and that to get a better
view, he was in marked contrast to the other passengers, most of whom were asleep. Noticing
this, the flight attendant, a young woman, approached him and asked:
"Is there anything wrong, sir? Can I help you?"
"No, thank you," Al replied, "My friend and I have come all the way from Massachusetts just to
study your clouds. We'd like to understand how they make rain so easily."
The puzzled look on the young woman's face turned solemn and she said, "I know what makes
the clouds rain."
"You do," said Al. "What?"
"God makes it rain."
"Oh no." replied Al with the slightest trace of a wry grin on his face. "that answer's too easy. But
if God does make the rain, we want to know exactly how he does it."
We never did prove to our satisfaction that sea-salt particles played a major role in the formation
of raindrops. That question is still unanswered today. God only knows the answer!
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I have recently added many of my lifetime collection of photographs and art works to an on-line shop where you can purchase notecards, posters, and greeting cards, etc. of my best images.
With the wind tunnel problem solved, I started taking pictures of the drops. I thought this would
be the easy part, but to my surprise portions of the drop acted like a mirror and reflected light
right back into the camera lens. It was like looking directly into the headlights on high beam of
an oncoming car at night. Much of the shape of the drop was hidden behind the glare of the
bright star-shaped spot of light on the photograph. I didn't know how to solve this problem until
one day I mentioned it to Vincent Schaefer, the discoverer of dry-ice cloud seeding. Vince told
me that since all natural waters contain a tiny amount of sodium chloride, all I had to do was add
a small pinch of silver nitrate to my tap water. That would react with the salt to produce silver
chloride, a milky-white colloidal suspension that would reflect the light from all over the drop
and make the photography easy. Vince was right. It did. All my photographs came out
beautifully. But unlike the artists' drawings of raindrops, there was not a tear-drop shape among
them! The drops were shaped like falling hamburger buns that vibrated as they fell like a bowl of
jelly. [for more, see "
I bought a can of Pennzoil motor oil and tried suspending a drop in the wind tunnel. In my first
few attempts the air speed in the tunnel was too high and the oil drops flew upward to splat on
the ceiling of the lab. I had to learn better housekeeping! I lowered the air speed in the tunnel
and was able to suspend a large drop of motor oil. Was it tear-shaped? Not at all. Because it had
a lower surface tension than that of water, the drop spread out to look just like a thick pancake.
And because of its higher viscosity, the drop had no oscillations or vibrations. It just sat there
quietly as it fell through the upward moving air.
For seventeen years I worked at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod,
Massachusetts. One of the interesting scientific puzzles my colleague, Alfred Woodcock, and I
were trying to solve was a possible connection between bubbles in the sea and the formation of
rain. We knew that the tiny droplets ejected into the air when the bubbles burst were carried by
winds high up into the atmosphere. Though most of the water might evaporate from the droplets,
particles of sea salt were left behind. We guessed that these particles would be carried into the
clouds by updrafts, and being hygroscopic would absorb water vapor and grow large enough to
fall. By sweeping up the smaller cloud droplets in their path, they would grow large enough to
fall out of the cloud as raindrops. [For more on this topic, see from "