But this third effect? The DC electric field? That one was new to him.
In his mind he pictured the tiny gyroscopes all brought into alignment by the interplay of magnetic forces; and around each proton the tiny, planetary electrons.
Yet it was very well to think of the proton nucleus of the hydrogen atom as a simple top, he reminded himself; but they were more complex than that. Each orbiting electron must also contribute something to the effect.
At that point, Mike remembered, the electron itself would be spinning, a lighter-weight gyroscope, much as Earth has a lighter weight than the Sun. The electron, too, had a magnetic field; more powerful than the proton's field because of its higher rate of spin, despite its lighter mass. The electron could also be lined up.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Mike remembered having read of another effect. The electron's resonance. Electron para-magnetic resonance.
It, too, could be controlled by radio frequencies in a magnetic field—but the frequencies were different, far up in the microwave region; about three centimeters as Mike recalled—and he went back to his supply cabinet to get another piece of equipment, a spare klystron that actually belonged to the radar department but that was "stored" in his shop.
At these frequencies, the three centimeter band of the electromagnetic spectrum, energy does not flow on wires as it does in the lower frequency regions. Here plumbing is required. But Mike, amongst other things, was an expert RF plumber.
Even experts take time to set up klystrons, and it was three hours later before Mike was ready with the additional piece of haywire equipment which carefully piped RF energy into the plastic block.
This refinement by itself had been done before; but some of the others that Mike applied during his investigation probably hadn't—at least not to any such tortured piece of plastic as now existed between the pole faces of the device.
To have produced the complete alignment of both the protons and the electrons within a mass might have been attempted before. To have applied an electrostatic field in addition to this had perhaps been attempted before. To have done all three, at the same time to the same piece of plastic, and then to have added the additional tortures that Mike thought up as he went along, was perhaps a chance combination, repeatable once in a million tries, one of those experimental accidents that sometimes provide more insight into the nature of matter than all of the careful research devised by multi-million-dollar-powered teams of classical researchers.