Midwinter calling, day 37

Falling water and lightning

Along with the new and more impressive high backed and comfortable dining room chairs, my sambos have gotten two special chairs made for me; one for the dining room table, and a much more 'impressive' chair that can be placed in the middle of the mezzanine above the stairs like a throne. I don't really appreciate either of them, but it is important and again is something my sambos have told me that I just need to accept as part of the culture and my status. If I sit on the throne, I am Furste Ackerek, not Sejdmann Arnesson or just Robert Arnesson. I don't mind Jane's 'helpful design suggestions' for the dining room chairs, but I do blame her for the throne, although I'm kind of glad that Jane actually made them understand why I dislike thrones on principle, and even when the throne isn't in use, it's a reminder and visible proof that it exist. That is sort of the point with a throne. And I don't want to walk past my throne every time I pass the mezzanine, nor do I want others to have to although most seem to want it as a reminder because I don't act like a Furste in normal day to day life. But obviously the throne shouldn't be used like a normal chair by anyone else, so I'm glad they accepted that the mezzanine throne usually won't be there but in the dark storage room where I've pulled a blanket over to cover it. Jane thinks it's a pretty good metaphor for what I think of 'my power' and what 'my rule' is like.

My dining room chair is thankfully not that much more special than other chairs around the table, and you don't see the embroidery on the back when seated, so I accept it as 'lord of the mansion'. Depending on possible guests. At least with the guards help I managed to convince them that the chair shouldn't be on either table end because I would have the courtyard window either behind my back or from the front. Bad for security reasons. Also the view is nicer towards the strait, and sitting in the middle I have Iselin and Kari on my sides and Ciara and Jane opposite or beside them depending on how many of us there are and if we have guests. I would have preferred to have guards and the staff eat with us for most meals, but that only happens on special occasions, or as a reward. In any case, I've made sure seat cushions are available and standard on all chairs for those who want them, and frankly the standard wooden chairs are just fine in terms of comfort, since I did consider ergonomics and comfort when ordering them. Even royal guest have noticed and commented on that.

To show that he too is crafty, Hrappr has built two vertical looms for the staff to have in their common room or wings attic, and of course I gave him permission to take materials for it and use the carpentry tools. My sambos opinion is that he's trying to impress them, but after it was pointed out, I've noticed that Jalida and Elvira seem to be more interested in me, probably because of my status and they know that Iselin and Ciara have advanced from being slaves. I honestly don't care about their previous status, or that other men forced themselves on them when they were slaves, which is 'extra interesting' since I also have Kari who everyone has always seen as a noble concubine, and Kari is now a Storman concubine which is extremely unusual, especially since she is now a very rich and powerful Stormman. A Storman without relatives like Kari is of course extremely attractive as a wife, and she wouldn't have found it hard to get free born men as her concubines, which Kari is of course very well aware of, but seems completely uninterested in. Kari's status is significantly rarer than for instance Caecilia's status is, as according to Asbjörn, there are about a dozen hóra here in the north. Kari, on the other hand, is singular, and has been so for basically a generation. Which makes her really proud and pleased.

Status thinking is oh so important in the culture, so many free men and women who have alternatives, don't want a partner who was a slave unless they are really in love, and there are also some who look down on the children of freed slaves where the child has never been a slave, especially if they are sworn to the one who freed their parents. This would be a big problem for all my maids except Ida, but my high status 'rubs off' on them, and me not caring about previous status has started to affect how others view former slave women at least here on the islands, so somewhat ironically, Elvira and Jalida are quite desirable because they are beautiful, wash often and have nice long hair even though it is dark, and they look extra good and stylish in their pretty maid clothes.

Ima and Shakini don't seem particularly receptive to any man's charms either, but of course their background story has become known among the staff, and they may have a hard time getting more 'respectable' men to take an interest in them. I've told everyone to respect them, not badmouth and spread rumours and that their past lives should not taint their future. If they wanted new names, I would've made sure that it was respected. Ima might be looking for a man and future, but no-one think that Shakini is and unfortunately her skin colour would make it far harder. Honestly, Shakini's personality won't help her as she is more like a robot than a living person. Radgeirrson really messed her up.

As part of the electricity and radio training, Iselin, Kari and Asta gets to build receiver units for the servant system. We still need a special variant for the alarm system for the guards day room which rings a bell until it's reset, and there needs to be two. The guards prefer to see certain specific alarms instead of zones, such as from my bedroom, balcony, etc. The staff room will get one more receiver unit as there are more rooms and places that should have a button to summon the staff, and in the future the B-mansion will probably get a system as well. The Academy will have one as well. Since I only supervise and help them build, and the first thermometers seem to work really well, I do the first steps on more thermometers. Going to need plenty of those too.

The wind have really picked up outside, and I'm glad the guards were quick to suggest to lower the wind turbine and lock it for bad weather, which they did as well as verify that the antenna is disconnected with its circuit breaker. There are spark gaps and other protection like that lightning rod that hopefully provide some protection, but I don't trust those protections, and disconnecting also grounds the antenna.

We cut today's work and training short due to the weather and loosing daylight, and Asta have been sent home. Sure, I can still work and train something, but I just don't feel like it, and music lures me up to the attic. My input is requested and it feels luxurious to be able to sit and just listen to how good Caecilia, Jane, Ciara, Gunhild and Hillevi have become at creating music. Via Elvira, Ima has let us know that she and Frida can play some music, and together with a couple of others have been playing and singing to entertain Radgeirrson and guests that way too. So when she doesn't have anything else to do, they let Ima participate, which she loves, along with listening to Midgård music. It's not like the maids were overworked when they were three, and being five they have more spare time. I'm so glad I made that server so I could transfer files to Jane's mobile. Not that I care if she used Tom's mobile phone, but understandably she likes to use her own mobile phone, and it's convenient when the mobile phone is more useful. Jane is hardly alone in loving the improved and more powerful speaker, but she truly loves that it's a bluetooth speaker, and Midgård music being played somewhere in the house have become very common.

Their performance is finished and I give them praise and applauds. Jane show me pictures on her phone as we discus the instruments and improvements, and Jane gives me another kiss on the cheek as a thank you. That always makes me uncomfortable, as I can't drop the suspicion that she do that just to make me uncomfortable or annoy me or the others.

I prefer to see Jane as a friend, and enjoy joking, general friend stuff and some teasing, but I've become more convinced that it might just be a matter of time, and I feel like an asshole since I'm not sure I would ask Jane to leave if I'd found her curled up waiting in my bed. There is almost no good outcome if that happens, and I worry how much will change, and not just between the two of us, but my sambos too. I am getting bloody married in two weeks! Literally, since that ceremony involve getting fresh warm blood splattered in my face.

I should write and put up 'missing' notes and see if anyone has found my lost morality when it comes to sex and relationships. But I'm not even sure when or where I lost it. At least some parts of it remain as I still won't touch the maids or even have thoughts about it. Even when Jalida seems to be flirting with me it is just a terrible idea, and frankly I just don't see the point. I just can't really see any reason why I would have sex with them, and the same goes for Jane, but for some reason I don't worry about asking them to leave my bed if I find them there. Which is utterly stupid. Some days just keeping my sambos and Caecilia happy feels a bit too much.

The strong wind turns into a severe thunderstorm with plenty of lightning. I don't want to sabotage the others religion, but Iselin and Kari want to know what I know about lightning, and they sure won't believe I don't know anything. Both have seen that the spark gap transmitter has 'tiny lightning bolts' in it. I try to derail their minds a bit by first talking about the speed of sound versus the speed of light. Indirectly I have also talked about this when I explained how fast electricity travels per second as we talked about antennas and wavelength. The reason 300MHz have 1 meters wavelength is due to that speed, and it also applies to light. Unfortunately, I can't prove exactly how fast the speed of light is, but they do understand that the distance we talked over radio had no noticeable delay, and the same goes for the future telegraph. About 0.1ms delay to Borgarsandr is not noticeable when it's a manual operated device, and the same applies to light when it's human operated and noticed. The curvature of the Earth makes distances long enough to be noticeable impossible. They already know that the delay between the lightning bolt and thunder tells how far away the lightning was, and I make them count seconds and multiply with 300m. Sound travels faster in denser materials, so water is faster, but in metal even faster. The speed of sound is much easier to measure and an echo is clear proof, which at least the sailors used to locate themselves in the foggy fjord. Proper measurement of the speed of sound at different temperatures and in different materials is a good advanced lab experiment for future physics lessons.

They are receiving electrical education, so I explain about electrical charge. That lightning is enormously powerful electricity and the same as the small lightning in the spark gap, only on a completely different scale. Iselin ask if it is the same charge as a capacitor, which is sort of is, and it would be possible to 'store' lightning with a truly humongous capacitor and equipment rated for it. Which brings the subject to the lightning rod I have already installed on the house. They have seen the lightning rod, and it was raised when the antenna was mounted, and now that they have started to understand electricity, they can understand that it can work and see the similarity with the antenna we tried. Jane have talked too much and they really want me to try and build a tesla coil in the future, so I can create lightning even if it is short and weak. I think it will be quite difficult and just the big smooth ball or toroid on the top will not be easy to do, but I have a lathe and can big a bigger one. Tesla coils are usually made of lacquered copper wire, and it's really just a bigger and different kind of spark gap transmitter. I might be able to make a small Jacob's ladder with an AC generator and transformer, or a van de graaf generator of some kind. The difficult part will be how to create and move the charge when I lack plastic material. Although I do have some plastic.

The discussion move and to static electricity and how dry air affects and keeps things insulated, and fabric etc can make something electrically charged that gives a shock when you touch something with a different charge or ground yourself, which is something they have experienced before, they just haven't known what was happening. Dry inland winter air can do that, and of course there are myths.

I can't help to contemplate about how we could measure the speed of light. What we can measure is how fast an electrical signal travels in a really long loop, by making an oscillator and measuring the frequency. But it is also difficult to measure except with the computer, although a tone can be generated and heard if the loop is long enough, but even a 20km loop gives approx. 10kHz oscillation if the propagation factor in copper is taken into account. Electromechanics have slow switching speed.

I don't really like using too advanced components for this because it makes it more magical and harder to understand, at the same time the speed of light test would have had to take place over longer surfaces so the time aspect becomes longer. Relatively simple would be a strong directed light beam that bounces on a multi-faceted mirror wheel where the light bounces on one facet, travels far away towards a reflector, travels back and hits another facet and reaches the eye. If the mirror wheel is then rotated, the light beam will sweep over the terrain, and only the short pulse that hits the reflector is reflected. The short reflected light pulse must hit a facet in exactly the right position to reach the eye. So when the faceted mirror wheel is still and in the right position, the light constantly reaches the eye, but if the wheel rotates a bit, the facet that sends the reflected light on to the eye will not be in the right position, and no light pulse can be seen. It is only when the next facet is in exactly the right position that the eye will see a pulse of light. The number of revolutions per second, divided by the amount of facets then gives accurate time interval, and the distance can be physically measured, although it can be difficult to be accurate in the distances needed to avoid the rotational speed becoming insanely high and difficult, as well as finding a place suitable for the experiment. A hundred facets will lower the rotational speed, but be harder to manufacture with the precision needed, so something lower like ten is better. The reflected light will be very weak, so might need a telescope and do it at night. Measuring the speed of light with a complete Alfheimr setup will not be an easy project.

I know the speed of light in a vacuum, and it is only a few ten thousandths lower in air, so if I measure over a short distance of 150m, a round trip only takes 1µs, which means too damn high speed of one hundred thousand revolutions per second for ten facets, and 1.5km gives 10µs and ten thousand revolutions. 15km gives 100µs and a thousand revolutions per second which is still very high but is becoming manageable. 30km gives around 500 revolutions per second, and 60km gives 250 revolutions per second, which is manageable. But over those long distances the curvature of the earth is a problem, and the damping and dispersion in the atmosphere becomes high, which places high demands on a strong directional light source, the mirror facets and a large accurate reflector and telescope. So it is a balance between how high speed and mechanical precision, and the optical limitations, plus a strong light source.

I know they measured the speed of light with high accuracy in the mid 19th century, but I don't know exactly how and they had access to far better equipment than I can probably build here in my lifetime. Using electronics, the most powerful LED, camera optics, the computer and the microphone input feels a little too technical and it can't really be replicated when some of it eventually stops working, but I should be able to measure reasonably accurately at shorter distances. The reflex I have on the backpack and in the jacket is only 6cm and even the reflex vest is a bit too small target but much better than something I'll be able to build and a dark moonless night with clouds, it can work at a fairly long distance if I can focus the light well enough. With LED's as photodiodes I can detect the signal and the frequency of the light pulses to direct measure with fairly high accuracy. Technically difficult but worth thinking about more.

However, since we have time, I try to improvise a simple Lord Kelvin falling water generator. It will be a very good experiment to show to students at the Academy, so I need to get some of the parts made in ceramic or glass to insulate. This prototype will be in brass and with soldering, because it is faster and easier to make. Which is the reason for the large hollowed wooden block as a container balancing on two earthenware mugs, with a couple of pieces of wood holding shorter metal cylinders and two brass vessels that catch the falling water. The collection vessels are cross-connected with the cylinders. The left goes to the right, and right to the left. A small spark gap of 3-4 mm between the collection vessels completes the generator. It is ugly as fuck.

It's a bit fiddly before it works well, and been so many emptying of vessels and refilling the top, but when it works and we see that every now and then there's is a tiny spark? Iselin, Kari, Ciara, Alith and Bodil are jaw droppingly shocked, and I have to explain what the fuck we just built and why it works. Water is neutral but has charged ions, and there is a random small mismatch in charge, which becomes a cascading effect as one side attracts its charge and repels the opposite charge. When I confirm that it is indeed the same as thunderstorm lightning or the spark gap in the transmitter, they are no less impressed. The spark gap transmitter and radio over all is something they're just starting to accept, but now I'm making lightning from falling water. I didn't even consider that they would make a connection to the fact that it often rains when there is thunder and lightning.

I work on optimizing the ratio a bit to make it consistent and better, and to make it more obvious that the water has charge - and make it more magical - each side gets two streams of falling water. It's more fiddling but finally we can see how the water jets begin to bend out towards the rings, the lightning discharges and the water falls straight again. Then it starts over. And over. Streams of falling water that bends! I'm going to get the potter in Borgarsandr to make parts for a far prettier falling water generator. Or maybe involve the glazier so it will be more transparent and prove that I didn't hide anything in the vessels or construction. As simple and clear as possible is preferable. The whole apparatus also needs to be easier to reset for repeated experiments with different liquids. And Iseling poking the spark gap proves it needs a warning sign. Sure, the generator isn't particularly dangerous, but it's best to be warned. Excited shouts have soon lured everyone to my workshop.

"What the fuck!?" Jane is just as surprised as the rest of them. "That water bends. Bends! How the fuck!? Is that a spark?! What! The! Fuck!"

I guess Jane has never seen this experiment before, and it is incredibly effective on everyone else. Especially after Jane's reaction, and the annoyed look she gives me when I initially refuse to explain how it works, but she actually do understand my quick explanation in English. Still:

Fucking Voodoo Magic, man!

Iselin declares that tonight I am hers.