The Experiment

In the course of my job I've experimented on several different things, the most being fly ash. I've experimented using corn syrup in class “C” fly ash, I've experimented in making light weight aggregate with fly ash, I've experimented with spent bed material. One of the most interesting happened on an fly ash land fill but not with fly ash.


My wife says that I am walking source of useless information. She's right, but don't tell her that. You do don't want to play against me in Trivial Pursuit. This time I was in New Johnsonville, Tennessee at a TVA plant. Only at TVA would they put a fly ash pond in the middle of the Tennessee River. That's exactly where it's at, you have to take a bridge to get to it.

For years TVA has been stacking fly ash from this pond under high voltage utility lines. These are the ones made out of steel three to four hundred feet high. TVA had been stacking so long that the we were approximately one hundred feet below the lines plus or minus.

One morning I was talking to Dave Schneider, our surveyor, out on this fill when he got shocked getting into my SUV. It hit me, I remembered a made for TV movie I had seen with Ralph Waite for 'The Walton's' fame. In this movie he played a father of a high school girl who was protesting the construction of high voltage wires over their farming community.

Her high school science teacher filmed her holding up a neon light bulb, like you probably have in your basement or shop, you know about four feet long with two metal points coming out of each end. The type of light that is in every public building. Well this girl walked in under these wires that was several hundred feet above her and held up bulb with nothing attached to it, just held up a bare bulb with her right hand and it lit up. There was enough electricity in the air to light this bulb.

I told Dave that if he held up a neon light it would light up and his response was BS. No, I told him I had seen it done, I didn't tell him I had seen it on TV. He laughed and dared me to try it. So the challenge was on.

The motel we were staying at used neon lights in the bathroom so I borrowed one. I got to the job site around six thirty, still dark. I knew I was going to win this dare because there was a slight glow inside my SUV when I drove up on the fill. I covered the bulb with a towel and waited for Dave and his co-op to get come in.

Guess what, my mind with useless information stored in it paid off. When Dave held up the bulb and it was shinning almost as bright as it did in my bathroom I won the dare.

I will talk about New Johnsonville and TVA in future blogs.