Suddenly his voice trailed off and he stared at the young inventor. “Did you say a matter-making machine?”
Tom chuckled at the surprised look on his friend’s face. Bud Barclay was his closest chum and acted as copilot on Tom’s air and space nights.
“That’s right, pal,” Tom explained. “This pilot model rigged up on my test bench is designed to turn electrical energy into matter.”
Bud shook his head. “Man, that’ll be a better trick than pulling a rabbit out of a hat. You’ll be making something out of nothing!”
“Not exactly.” Tom grinned. “You wouldn’t call an atomic explosion nothing, would you?”
“I’d say it’s nothing to fool around with,” Bud quipped. “Why?”
“Well, with atomic fission, you’re turning matter into energy. This setup does just the reverse. Both cases depend on Einstein’s famous equation Ł – me2, which means that energy and matter
MORE POWER! 3
are interchangeable. They’re simply two different forms of the same thing.”
Bud scratched his head thoughtfully. “Like water and ice, I suppose. Sounds good, but how do you do it?”
Tom grabbed a pencil and paper. “It’s quite simple, really-at least the idea is simple. Einstein has shown that as matter approaches the speed of light, its mass increases. He worked it all out in this one little equation.”
As Tom’s pencil flew over the paper, Bud gulped. “You call that one little equation, pal? Looks like a whole night’s homework in math to me! Keep it simple, please.”
“Okay.” Tom laughed. “What my new invention does is take a particle of matter and whirl it around faster and faster until it’s going almost at the speed of light.”
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