A long time ago my brother told me about a short story where a scientist, investigating why perforated paper always seems to tear anywhere except at the perforations, discovers some property by which holes in things make the material stronger. He ends up inventing a material with so many holes in it it’s no longer there, and is now impenetrable.
Probably not the most exact description, but does it ring any bells? It runs through my mind whenever something with perforations fails to tear properly, and I’d love to read it.
What was the story about the human race’s discovery of interstellar travel?
In a nutshell, a guy notices that a letter going across towm can take a couple of weeks to reach its destination, while one from across the country makes it in two days. On a hunch, he addresses a letter to a planet in the Proxima Centauri system, and drops it in the mailbox. Next morning, he gets a letter from the aliens, congratulating him, and welcoming Earth to the Galactic Confederation.
Is that the one about the Israeli Air Force perforating the wings of planes right where they tend to get stressed – because, hey, if there’s one thing we’ve learned from being Jewish, it’s that matzo never breaks that way, amirite?
I have a story I’d love to find again: scientist invents impenetrable force field. But the nature of the field is such that the longer it’s on, the more power it takes to sustain it. So more than a couple seconds is flatly impossible; it would take the output of a sun to keep it going. Inventor discards the idea as having very limited application.
Then a new guy uses the invention successfully by triggering it on and off thousands of times per second, making what’s in effect a continuous field for practical purposes.
On “Not Final”, my favorite bit is how the original scientist (who declares that this is an absolute limit) is so proud of his theoretical work, because an experimentalist would probably have lost an arm before he realized it was impossible. And then at the end, the ship with the triumphant forcefield hull is piloted by the one-armed man who made it work.
