The Tenacious Inventor A young student of meteorology was having a difficult time with an experiment. He was attempting to duplicate lightning in clouds. He had made a device that could simulate lightning. It worked by releasing an electromagnetic pulse into the cloud. This pulse, in turn, stimulated the electrons in the cloud’s particles. Then the electrons produced lightning. But his meteorological experiment had a major defect. He couldn’t get the device into the sky. He had tied it to balloons, but they had burst. He had shot the device from a cannon, but the force of the cannon had damaged it. “You should give up,” his friends told him. “You’ll never get that thing into the air.” But his friends’ criticisms only spurred him to try again. The student was very innovative, and at last, he thought that he had an innovation that would work. He attached wings to the device, and on one dreary day, when clouds blocked the light of the sun, he started his experiment anew. He placed the device on a rocket and launched it into the sky. The propulsion of the rocket carried the device high into the air. The rocket accelerated into the clouds and then released the device. It glided on its wings through the clouds, and when it penetrated the center of a large black cloud, it emitted the electromagnetic pulse. And just as he had predicted, lightning shot from the cloud! He called his professors, and the next day they came to watch. He successfully duplicated the experiment. His teachers were extremely impressed and called the student and his invention ingenious. The student was given many awards and became a famous inventor. He had not given up. He had remained tenacious and succeeded.