Make It · Book Seven
Two-Cup Line
Sound is a shove travelling through something, and it travels through tight string very well using no power at all, which is why the best machine in the Ear is the dumbest one. This is a listening post for two, because one person hearing a thing is a story and two people hearing the same thing is a fact.
You need
- three paper or plastic cups
- twenty feet of thin non-stretchy string (kite string or button thread, not wool, not elastic)
- a pushpin
- a paper clip
- and permission to use the pin
About half an hour. Everything on that list came out of a kitchen, which is the rule these pages are written to.
Steps
- Push a hole in the exact middle of the bottom of each cup, just big enough for the string. If a cup tears, start a new one.
- Thread one end of the string out through the inside of the first cup, tie it round the paper clip, and pull it back until the clip lies flat inside the bottom. That is your anchor.
- Do the same with the second cup on the other end.
- Walk apart until the string is tight, off the ground, and touching nothing — not a chair, not a door frame, not a finger. Touching is the whole test.
- One of you talks quietly into a cup. The other listens with the cup over one ear and a hand over the other. Do not shout. Shouting goes through the air and proves nothing.
- Now the real build. Untie one end, thread the third cup onto the middle of the line, and knot the string so that cup hangs off it. Two listeners, one line.
- Have the talker say one short word, quietly, once. Both listeners write it down before either of them speaks. Then compare.
- Do nine words. Count how many times two people wrote the same thing.
Try this
send one word down a tight line, then a loose one, then with somebody's finger resting on the string. Keep it in columns — day, string, word, what each listener wrote. That is a log, and a log is the only reason anybody believes anybody. > Nothing points at a person.