Good morning! said Totty, as he and the boys came back after Shacharis.
"Who would like to go on a trip?"
The Greenbaums were in Detroit for Tante Ahuva’s chasuna. The chasuna was not until tomorrow night, so everyone was excited to see what Totty had planned.
The family packed into their rental car and Totty drove for a while, before arriving at a large factory.
"What is this?" asked Basya.
"You’ll see," Totty replied.
The family walked inside the enormous building and their jaws dropped. Massive robotic machines were lifting partially built cars, welding parts, and attaching the doors.
"Welcome," said a balding middle-aged man. "This is our automobile assembly line. As you walk along, you will see how we start with raw parts, and attach everything until we have a finished car."
"Wow, this is incredible!" said Yitzy, as they reached the end of the production line. "It’s amazing how they can create a vehicle like this from just pieces of metal!"
"Yes, but where does the metal come from?" asked Totty.
Everyone thought about this as Totty led them back to the car and they drove to another factory.
"This is a stamping plant," Totty said as they entered the factory.
Inside, everyone watched in amazement as the workers took giant rolls of steel sheets, and then cut, bent, punched, and shaped them using massive hydraulic presses.
"Oh wow," said Shimmy as he watched. "All of the parts of the cars come from these giant sheets of metal!"
"Yes," said Totty. "But there’s more."
Again, the Greenbaums got in the car and they drove to a steel mill. Inside the steel mill, they saw truckloads of rocks being dumped into giant furnaces.
Parshas Bereishis
"These rocks are called iron ore," a worker explained. "We smelt them in these blast furnaces to produce what’s called ‘pig iron’. Come with me."
The Greenbaums followed the worker to the other side of the furnaces.
"That looks like a yummy drink," said little Yaeli, watching the glowing molten iron being poured from the furnaces into “pig iron” molds.
"It’s super hot!" said Yitzy. "It would burn you badly if you tried to drink it."
"But Mommy will blow on it for me," little Yaeli replied.
Then they approached the steel assembly line, where “pig iron” was being melted again and combined with carbon and alloys to produce steel, before being rolled out into the large sheets they saw at the stamping plant.
"One more place to visit," Totty said as they got back in the car.
After twenty-five minutes of driving they arrived at the largest hole in the ground they had ever seen.
"This hole must be half a mile wide!" Yitzy gasped.
"Actually it’s three quarters of a mile wide," said a man nearby wearing a hard-hat.
"This is an open-pit mine," Totty explained. "As you can see, those massive dump trucks are hauling iron ore that is being dug straight out of the ground."
"So these rocks that they are pulling from the ground right here are what they make cars out of?" asked Basya.
"My morah made a car out of popsicle sticks!" said little Yaeli.
"Kinderlach," Totty said. "Today we watched the amazing process of how cars are made from rocks in the ground. It’s incredible the amount of engineering that goes into taking raw materials and turning them into a vehicle which we can drive. But that’s nothing compared to what I’m going to show you next."
"A rocketship factory?" asked Shimmy excitedly?
"Nope," said Totty. "Turn around."
Everyone turned around.
"I don’t see anything," Yitzy said.
"A little to the right," Totty said as everyone turned.
"A little more..."
Everyone kept turning until they had turned in a complete circle.
"We still don’t see anything," Basya said.
"What are you saying?" said Totty. "Look at everything! The trees! The lake over there! The grass! The rocks! The people! Hashem created all of this during sheishes yemei bereishis out of NOTHING! No steel sheets, no ‘pig iron’, no rocks, no tools. Before Creation, there was nothing - not even a single tiny speck of dust - zilch! And with just His words, Hashem brought this entire world into existence: the galaxies, the stars, the planets, and everything on Earth. That is the biggest neis ever!
As amazing as it is to think about how people make cars, that can never even come close to comparing where even the smallest speck of dust comes from. Any time you look at anything in this world - we should think ‘we are looking at a neis’ - it was all created by Hashem from NOTHING."
Have a Wonderful Shabbos!
Let’s Review:
- What is more amazing? A rock in the ground or a Tesla?
- Why?
