Rupert Morcom, the elder son, had entered Sherborne in 1920, and had won a scholarship in science to Trinity College, Cambridge; he was now engaged in research at the Technische Hochshule in Zurich. Like Alan he was an avid experimenter, but one with the advantage that his parents had been able to construct a laboratory for him at home. His younger brother, who also had the use of the laboratory, now told Alan of all this, exciting great envy.

他们的大儿子拉普特.默卡，于1920年进入舍尔伯尼，后来获得了剑桥大学三一学院的研究奖学金，现在苏黎世的一家科研机构从事科研。和艾伦一样，他是一个劲头十足的实验者，但他更有优势，他父母能在家里给他建一个实验室。他的弟弟，也就是把这一切告诉艾伦的人，也能使用这个实验室，这令艾伦感到很嫉妒。

In particular, Christopher told Alan about an experiment that Rupert had taken up before going to Cambridge in 1925. It concerned a chemical effect which Andrews often used to draw the interest of the younger boys. By chance it involved Alan's old favourite, iodine. Solutions of iodates and sulphites, when mixed, would result in the precipitation of free iodine, but in a rather striking way. Alan later explained: 'It is a beautiful experiment. Two solutions are mixed in a beaker and after waiting for some very definite period of time, the whole suddenly becomes a deep blue. I have known it take a time, 30 secs., and then turn blue in 1/10 of a sec. or less.' Rupert had been investigating not the easy problem of working out the recombination of ions, but that of explaining this time delay. It required a knowledge of physical chemistry, and an understanding of differential equations, both beyond the school syllabus. Alan wrote:

克里斯朵夫给艾伦讲了拉普特1925年去剑桥之前做的一个实验，这是一个安德鲁经常用来吸引注意力的化学反应，而且涉及到艾伦的最爱――碘。碘溶液和亚硫酸盐溶液放在烧杯里混合，会使碘以一种特殊的状态析出沉淀。艾伦评论：“这是一个漂亮的实验。两种溶液在烧杯里混合，等待一定的时间，整个突然变成深蓝色。我知道它需要30秒，然后再在0.1秒之内变成浅蓝。”拉普特研究的，不是简单的离子重组问题，而是如何延长这个变化时间。这需要物理化学的知识，还有对很多公式的理解，这些都在学校大纲之外。艾伦说：

Chris and I wanted to find a relation between the time and the concentrations of the solutions and thereby verify Rupert's theories. Chris had already done some experiments upon it. We were looking forward very much to the experiment. The results unfortunately did not agree with theory and I made more experiments during the following holidays and invented a new theory. I sent the results to him and so we started to write to one another in the holidays.

我和克里斯想知道时间与沉淀之间的关系，并证明拉普特的理论。克里斯已经做了一些相关实验，我们对这些实验期望很高，但结果却很不幸地与理论不相符。在接下来的假期里，我做了更多实验，并提出了一个新理论。我把结果寄给他，于是我们在假期开始通信了。

He did more than write to Christopher – he invited him to Guildford. Ross, as housemaster, would have been horrified by this audacious step.25 Christopher replied26 (after some delay) on 19 August:

他不光给克里斯朵夫写信，他还邀请他到格尔福特来。罗斯如果知道这件事，一定会被这样的大胆行为吓晕。克里斯朵夫在8月19日的回信（稍微拖了几天）中写道：

… Before getting on to experiments I must thank you very much for your invitation to come and stay with you, but I am afraid I shall not be able to come as we are going away somewhere, probably abroad for about three weeks, just at that time … I am sorry not to be able to come; it is very kind of you to ask me.

……在谈实验之前，首先谢谢你邀请我去和你一起住，但我恐怕去不了，因为我那时刚好要去另一个地方待三个星期左右，也许是国外……很抱歉来不了，谢谢你的邀请。