By Walter H. Uphoff

Most people prefer first-hand evidence when confronted with an anomaly and in that respect we are not different from others. As mentioned in Chapter III, we now have a substantial collection of twisted cutlery and metal and have been reluctant to give any pieces to friends, even when they begged for "just one" because no one ever knows when one of these pieces might be of importance in further tests. We gladly sacrificed several for science and are willing to make some of the others available if the situation is warranted.

Our collection, one year after my 1976 visit to Japan, included three tablespoons from the Tokyo visit to the Kiyota home, numerous spoons sent later by Masuaki, including two which we had mailed from here and which he returned along with additional bent spoons and metal strips. Still in our possession up to the time of the boys' visit in the summer of '79, were more than a dozen spoons, one twisted strip of aluminum, one strip of bi-metal twisted in the presence of Prof. Sasaki, and five files, one bent into a U-shape and fully intact, and four that were bent and broken. Even though we communicated frequently by letter, the translation from English to Japanese and Japanese to English was complicated enough so that I could not be certain whether the four files had been broken in experiments, or because they had been mailed in a light - weight envelope which was punctured when it arrived.

I had bought a supply of heavy stainless steel tablespoons at Keio Plaza department store before I left Tokyo because I wanted to find out how much force it would take to bend them, and also whether the same tight bends could be produced mechanically as the twists we had seen Masuaki produce. The first person to apply a torque test was our neighbor, Glenn Austin. [Professional photographer with training in physics.]

Glenn put one of the unbent spoons in a vise, attached a torque wrench and turned the handle as steadily as possible. He got a reading of about 7-foot pounds of force required to produce a very wide, gentle twist, rather than the tight twist in the "Masuaki spoons." That means a force of about 84 pounds would be required at a leverage distance of one inch, instead of 12 inches and twice that amount if the leverage was only 1/2 inch. How much force would you figure it would take to twist a spoon with bare hands (or with gloves for that matter?) on contact with no leverage? We would be at least as excited to see someone produce such a tight twist with his hands, as we were to see Masuaki demonstrate his PK ability.

Next I took some of the twisted spoons to Prof. David J. Mack in the Department of Metallurgical and Mineral Engineering at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He examined some of the spoons with a magnifying glass, was intrigued with what he saw, and agreed to run some tests at a later date.

Prof. Richard G. Koegel and two of his students agreed to make some torque tests on tablespoons I had brought back from Japan. Koegel put plywood on both sides of the bowl of the spoon before putting, it into the vise so that no visible marks would be made on the spoon. Then he clamped the torque wrench on the handle at 1 1/4 inches above the bowl (spoon No. 17) and recorded an estimated torque of 5 foot-pounds, or 60 inch-pounds. The twist produced in the handle was a very gradual one as can be seen in the photo. Next another spoon (No. 18, the same kind as No. 17) was then put into the vise and twisted with the torque wrench applied at 3/4 inches above the bowl. Again it took about 60 inch-pounds of force to twist the handle and the result was another gentle twist, a little tighter than the first one but without the droop of the bowl that so often appears in Masuaki's spoons. As can be seen in the close-up of the first spoon Masuaki twisted, there is a pronounced "droop" which suggests a momentary softening or plasticizing in the area of the bend (page 16).

To see what explanations for the Kiyota-bent spoons I might elicit, I showed the twisted spoons from Japan to several staff members in the Engineering building. The responses I got were interesting, to say the least. One suggested that it was possible that all the hardware stores in the area where the Kiyota family lives were in league with the family to perpetrate a hoax on foreigners by selling them "pre-softened" spoons. [Masuaki has just as easily twisted spoons obtained 15 and 9000 miles away.] Without inquiring how many witnesses there were, another offered the same explanation I had gotten from "non-experts"; namely, that the spoons had somehow been stuck into a keyhole or crevice while I was not looking. (Twelve persons were present when Masuaki, standing in the middle of the room, had twisted the spoon.) He did not inquire whether there had been any "keyholes" within reach, nor did he seem to consider how many pounds of force would be required to twist the spoon without leverage. Another said it must be a "gag," and just wasn't interested in looking at the spoons.

When I mentioned to one of the professors that two physicists had been present when the spoons were bent, he responded, "How do I know they were not in "kahoots" with the boys? I would have to have the testimony of a Nobel Prize winner." When I told him that Dr. Brian Josephson, a Nobel prize winner in physics from Cambridge, England was one of those who investigated Matthew Manning who had bent cutlery in Toronto in June 1974, he said, "Oh well, I would have to see it myself."

After the testing was complete, one of Prof. Koegel's students figured out how to bend a spoon by physical force and he did a credible enough job to reinforce their beliefs that "there is no such thing as mind over matter." What he did was manually bend the handle of the spoon into a right angle near the bowl. Any man with strong hands can do that. Then he held the bowl firmly, upside down flat on the edge of a solid table and applied considerable force to turn the handle clockwise toward him about 180 degrees. Then he took the bent spoon and straightened out the 90-degree angle until the handle was approximately "straight." The spoon did then have a gentle twist of about 160 degrees in the handle. It was apparent that they were not interested in reading about laboratory tests done elsewhere, so I thanked them for their cooperation and left.

Number 18, the spoon that Prof. Koegel had bent with the torque wrench attached 3/4 inch above the bowl, and a spoon bent paranormally by young Kiyota were then taken to Prof. David Mack's laboratory. He used a jeweler's saw and in each case had to saw about 10 minutes to cut through the handles near the twist as shown in the photo. He tried to break them when the saw was about halfway through the metal but could not do it with his hands. He put the two twisted pieces in a holder, filled it with bakelite compound and with heat and pressure produced a "plug" which he ground down to 600 fineness, at which level there were no significant differences when they were examined under a microscope.

I had met David Ashpole, a sales representative of ESCO Corporation on a plane trip. Later that fall (1977) when we were in Portland, Oregon, I phoned the ESCO Steel Manufacturing Corporation and discussed PK metal bending with him. He thought that their research department might be interested in hearing about the spoons which I had seen paranormally twisted. Mr. Laurence J. Venne, the technical director, invited two of his associates into his office to hear my report on the metal bending I had witnessed. Since he is on the 'firing line' in industry where it pays to be open to ideas and possibilities and not to be concerned about possibly having to rewrite some lecture notes if PK could be demonstrated in a laboratory setting, Mr. Venne and his co-workers asked a number of pertinent questions. After visually examining the spoons he estimated that they would have to be heated to 2000-2500 degrees Fahrenheit to produce a twist like the one in the spoons, and said that if heat had been used, the metal should have been discolored. The paranormally bent spoons showed no signs of discoloration whatsoever. If the bending had been done by physical force, Mr. Venne said he would expect to see striations or fractures where the bend occurred. These were also absent.

Later Mr. Venne mailed me a reprint of an article about the Geller effect from the magazine Metals and Materials, October 1977, page 52. It is reproduced here for readers to see how someone was able to produce the bends which simulate the Geller effect. We suggest that you read it carefully and then decide whether you think Geller, Manning or Kiyota had the technical know-how and access to the elaborate equipment and materials required to produce these effects.

A close-up of two tablespoons in which Masuaki said he "willed" a double twist - one with a greater distance between the two twists. The spoon in the center shows a triple twist as though the spoon was twirled while it was momentarily plastic. The bowl of the spoon broke off in the mail.

Upper spoon was twisted mechanically in a vise by Prof. Koegel. Lower spoon bent by hand as described in text. Both had a gentle twist rather than the tight twists Masuaki usually gets. Prof. Mack sawed out the twisted section for tests of the two spoons in the middle - one twisted by Prof. Koegel and the other by Masuaki Kiyota.

In view of the publicity given to the Uri Geller effect it is surprising that there has been no serious examination of the phenomenon in the metallurgical literature. With this in mind, Dr W. E. Duckworth gave a talk on his interpretation of the subject to the Society.

Dr Duckworth began by pointing out that the bending or breaking of metal without the apparent use of external force was not a new phenomenon in metallurgy: The most recent example being that of special metals possessing the shape memory effect. He provided a dramatic illustration at the outset when a strip of beta brass, which had been straightened from its previous bent position in liquid nitrogen, was allowed to warm arm up with heat from the projector, and in front of the audience it bent spontaneously with no apparent external intervention. He then went on to simulate the Uri Geller effect even more closely with strips of the same metal in fork form. Their alloy composition was such that immersion in an alcohol/ice mixture performed the necessary phase transformation required in the shape-memory phenomenon. These forks had previously been bent at room temperature: after cooling in the alcohol/ice mixture they were quickly straightened and handed around the audience. When stroked by human hand, several members of the audience had the satisfaction of seeing the forks bend very convincingly.

Other bending and breaking phenomenon were then demonstrated. A spoon made from Wood's metal was plunged into hot water just above its melting point at 66° C; when quickly removed it was seen to bend spontaneously and then break. Next, an aluminium strip was brushed with cotton wool soaked in mercurous nitrate, and after placing one or two drops of mercury upon the surface, the strip quickly fractured under a very light load. Finally, a steel sample under tension was surrounded by zinc, and when a sulphuric acid solution was allowed to drip between the metals hydrogen was generated. This was absorbed by the steel strip which subsequently fractured spontaneously.

The speaker claimed that the demonstrations confirmed his thesis that there were many ways by which metals could be shown to bend or break without apparent external intervention. Energy was needed however and he demonstrated this by separately fracturing brittle steel and brittle plastic. The pieces flew a considerable distance, thus illustrating that a substantial amount of energy had to be supplied.

Dr Duckworth then posed the question, how did Uri Geller supply the energy to do the bending and breaking? and went on to speculate about the processes which might be used. Through the good offices of Professor John Taylor of King's College London, a foreign stainless steel fork was shown which according to Professor Taylor, had been bent and broken by Uri Geller. Figure 1 shows the fork, and the more magnified appearance of the fracture is illustrated in Fig. 2. A stereoscan picture of the fractured surface is illustrated in Fig. 3. The rippled pattern shown on the fork surface in Fig. 2, and the appearance of the fracture in Fig. 3, suggest that failure was due to high strain fatigue.

To check this hypothesis a similar fork was flexed until it broke. To do this it had to be bent some ten times through an angle of about 50°. The appearance after fracture is shown in Fig. 4. In this, the ripples are coarser and the fracture appearance is clearly indicative of high strain fatigue. In other experiments a much smaller angle of bend, about 5° , was used, and the number of reversals to failure increased to about 100. The appearance of the fractured fork was then as shown in Fig. 5, and a stereoscan of the fracture in Fig. 6. Although the ripples are still coarser than on the Uri Geller fork, the general appearance of Figs. 5 and 6, and Figs, 2 and 3 respectively is quite similar.

On this basis, the speaker implied that one method of reproducing the Uri Geller effect would be by repeated cycling through a very small angle, possibly only one or two degrees, until fracture was imminent. It should then be possible for a skilled conjurer to be able to reproduce all the effects demonstrated in Uri Geller's public appearances.

Dr Duckworth was careful to suggest, however, that the evidence was not sufficient to assert definitely that Uri Geller did in fact perform this imminent pre-fracture operation before presenting his show. He pointed out that whatever external source of energy was used to bend or break the metal, it must ultimately deform and fracture by one of the well known mechanisms he had described. The mechanism which caused the Uri Geller fork to break was clearly akin to that of high strain fatigue. But this was not to say that the actual process used by him was high strain fatigue: there may well be sources of energy other than flexing by physical means which could cause failure, and all that we witnessed at such performances was the manifestation of a high strain fatigue failure in the final product.

Dr Duckworth concluded by saying that it may never be possible to determine without dispute the source of Uri Geller's power by external examination of the actual pieces used by him. All that metallurgists could properly say is that it would be possible for a skilled conjurer to reproduce the Uri Geller effect by pre-strain flexing on the forks. Whether Uri Geller himself did that was something on which each individual would have formed his own decided views. He added that Professor John Taylor would also welcome further metallurgical examination of his bent forks, and any other laboratories should contact him for specimens if they wish.

END

The metal in files is brittle and normally breaks instead of bending. The U-shaped file bent in the handle which is not case-hardened, suggesting that whatever energies are at work influence that part which has least resistance. Spoons and forks generally twist or bend where the metal is thinnest. The metal strips were supplied by Prof. Shegemi Sasaki of the University of Electro-Communications in Tokyo. No. 13 was a bi-metal strip - two kinds of metal fused into one, each having a different coefficient of expansion. Yet this strip also twisted without signs of stress or separation where the two metals meet. No. 14 is an aluminum strip.

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