Paul Robinson

Taught physics for nearly 40 years at a variety of high schools in Los Banos, Clovis, Fresno, Roseville, and finally my last 20 years at San Mateo High School, where my wife Ellyn Daugherty founded and developed the biotech program. I authored lab manuals that accompany Conceptual Physics and Ellyn has authored her very own biotech textbook. Although we are now both retired from the classroom we do educational consulting. We divide out time between our homes in El Dorado Hills where we live on a golf course and our condo in San Francisco across the street from the Giants ball park. We are both big Giants fans, and I proposed to Ellyn at Candlestick Park and were married in Giants uniforms. I am currently working on a book about physics and baseball.

Skip Wagner and I met during a summer school US History class with Mr. McCloskey between our sophomore and junior years. Even though we moved in different circles, we became best friends then and we still are today. We ended up being graduation partners. Skip excelled in music, and received the John Phillips Sousa Award as the outstanding musician of his class. Skip eventually became a trumpeter for the San Francisco Ballet and Opera and has several recordings to his credit. In the early 80's Skip and I blended our music and physics careers choreographing and constructing a traveling laser light show. Skip is now my technology wizard and does both my wife's website (www.bioteched.com) and my own (www.laserpablo.com). He is very talented and I have been fortunate indeed to have such a good friend all these years.

We had many fun times in high school. But one of the best was doing our senior physics project together where I was trying to measure the speed of light much the same fashion as Michelson and Morley did in the late 1800's which early Michelson the Nobel Prize. This involved shining light beams between very rapidly spinning mirrors from one mountain top to another. One night we were at Gary Kring's ranch on the edge of Los Gatos, and I told Gary I could make a smoke bomb that would be as big as his house. Cell phones and GPS weren't even on the drawing boards in those days, so the intended use of the smoke bomb was for sighting purposes to enable Skip to see what mountain my spinning mirror apparatus was located on. This would enable me to line up the mirrors and point them to a mountain in Los Gatos. However, flashing headlight beams atop Mt. Hamilton worked just fine making the smoke bombs unnecessary.

Gary thought I was exaggerating and dared me to set them off. Skip assured him I was not, but that was not enough to convince Gary. Since I really didn't need the smoke bombs for their intended purpose anymore, I proceeded to set them up on a grassy field outside his house. I think I used a metal garbage can lid to pour the powder on so it would not cause a fire. It was about 8 or 8:30 PM and the sun was just setting. I had enough for several bombs but dumped the entire concoction on the ground and lit it. A intense flame about 5 or 6 feet tall quickly erupted and a huge cloud of smoke enveloped his yard and house. He was mightily impressed and a bit taken back. He had no idea such a small amount of white power could create so much smoke. It took about 10 or 15 minutes for the cloud to dissipate, but after it did Skip and I left for home each in our own car. Skip had a sports car (Sprite) while I had my dad's 66 Impala. Skip's Sprite could handle the winding road much better than my dad's Impala and he quickly got ahead of me, taking the turns a tad over the speed limit.

Not long later I came upon Skip. He had apparently gotten pulled over by a policeman who was questioning him. Instead of driving on by (because we were both speeding) I pulled over behind him and waited. I was not about to abandon my good buddy, even if it meant getting a speeding ticket.

After questioning Skip a few minutes, the police officer come over to question me. I thought we both were going to get speeding tickets for sure. But when I rolled down the window, the officer asked "What are you two young men doing out here this evening?" Without hesitation I explained how we were working on an experiment to measure the speed of light bouncing light beams off mountain tops, etc., and even produced a signed letter by Mr. Criswell, my parents, and Mr. Matheny to that effect. The officer was flabbergasted. Apparently Skip had told him the same thing and the officer wanted to check with me to see if our stories jibed, apparently thinking this had to be some cock and bull story. I'm sure officers have heard lots of excuses for speeding but probably never due to measuring the speed of light!

After reading the signed letter, he handed it back to me and said "OK fellas, please slow down on this road. And by the way, and give us a call if you see something strange--we've received multiple reports that there was an airplane crash on the side of this mountain somewhere, but we can't seem to find it."

I assured him we would, as we both breathed a sigh of relief and headed home.