Scientific Method

Red Keds.

At the age of five, I discovered pride of ownership in a new pair of red Keds. I can still see them in my mind.

Our house was being reroofed at the time, and men were up on the housetop pulling up the old shingles and tossing them down into the yard for later cleanup. As I prepared to go outside and play in my new red Keds, mother called out, “Be careful. There are lots of nails lying around, and nails will go through tennie‑shoes.”

That stopped me cold. Nails? Go through tennie-shoes? That just didn’t sound right to me.

My curiosity got the better of me. I went outside and found a short roofing nail. I tried to step on it—just to test the hypothesis, mind you—but the nail collapsed under my shoe. It was clear my experiment needed refinement.

I went out to my dad’s garage and rooted around a bit. Soon I found the perfect apparatus: an 18-inch length of 2×4 with a large nail driven all the way through one side and protruding out the other. This is just what I needed. I put the board down on the concrete floor and gingerly placed my new red Keds on the nail. Nothing happened. I tried stepping up, so I was putting all my weight on the nail, but lost my balance. My protocol was still faulty.

I carried the board to our front porch, which was edged with wrought iron railing. I set the board down, put both hands on the railing for balance, placed my right foot squarely on the nail and put all my weight on that foot. Nothing happened. I was balanced on the point of a nail. I concluded that my mother didn’t know anything about the characteristics of nails or the power of red Keds.

Before declaring the experiment a success, though, I decided to make doubly sure of my results. Still holding onto the railing, I began to twist and turn my whole body, daring the nail the pierce my clearly awesome tennie-shoes. It took several twists and turns, but suddenly the nail did pierce the shoe and immediately sunk itself deep into my instep.

I howled in pain.

My mother rushed onto the porch in response to my wailing, then stopped short. She stared at me dumbfounded. It seemed she found it hard to believe that she had given birth to such a child. She did find it in her heart to comfort me, but she kept questioning me in disbelief.

“And you did this on purpose? And what was the point? Are you mad, child?” And so on.

I could never quite get her to comprehend the importance of scientific investigation and the value of discovering the nature of physical laws through direct observation.

She wouldn’t buy me another pair of red Keds either.