From the Archives: Blow Things Up

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From: mcnalley@agora.rdrop.com (James E. Mcnalley)
Subject: How to blow things up
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Date: Tue, 17 May 1994 13:48:48 GMT
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Yesterday, I figured out how to blow things up. It is actually quite simple. First, take a pencil and set it down on a table. Now, you need some way to instantaneously accelerate it to 186,282 miles/sec (in a vacuum, if you happen to have one). If you manage to do that, the pencil will move an infinitesimal distance before it starts to go back in time. Once it goes back in time, since it is in nearly the same position that it used to be in, it will blow up. Either that, or you will have two pencils fused together. The interesting thing about this is that the pencil will explode before you first accelerate it! So, all you must do is be able to accelerate it, and then decide to. You don’t actually have to accleerate it (you can’t, since it would go back in time and destroy itself, leaving you with a handfull of splinters).

I believe that this happens in nature, or at least with domestic animals. To demonstrate this, you must have a dog and some water. Apply the water to the dog so that the dog is soaking wet. Quickly stand back. The dog will now realize that it is wet, and start to rotate back and forth quickly. This small amount of motion near the center of its body will be amplified at the end of the dog’s fur, and the (wet) fur will be accelerated to the appropriate speed. Once the dog is finished shaking, you will notice that the fur is *ALL* FLUFFY*! it is not stuck to the dog like when it was wet. This is because all the water and some of the ends of the fur exploded! Compare the dry dog’s fur to the exploded pencil.

—
James McNalley | “I have never let my schooling interfere with my
JEM Computer Consulting | education” -Mark Twain
mcnalley@agora.rdrop.com| “Live free or die” -New Hampshire motto
Portland, OR |
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From: lartigue@prairienet.org (Dave A. Lartigue)
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Subject: Re: How to blow things up
Date: 17 May 1994 18:21:54 GMT
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In a previous article, mcnalley@agora.rdrop.com (James E. Mcnalley) says:

>     Yesterday, I figured out how to blow things up. It is actually quite simple. First, take a pencil and set it down on a table. Now,

There is an easier way. Simply tear the pencil in half. Then take one of the halves and tear it in half. Continune until you only have one atom. The next tear will produce a very satisfying explosion.

I recommend only doing this at home. I was demonstrating this to a co-worker with a stapler and was fired for the resulting explosion.

Dave

—

Dave A. Lartigue || I’m so wired, even my PGP public key is private!

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Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars — mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is “mere.” I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination — stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern — of which I am a part…. What is the pattern or the meaning or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little more about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. -Richard Feynman-

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Vague and insignificant forms of speech, and abuse of language have so long passed for mysteries of science; and hard and misapplied words, with little or no meaning, have, by prescription, such a right to be mistaken for deep learning and height of speculation, that it will not be easy to persuade either those who speak or those who hear them, that they are but the covers of ignorance, and hindrance of true knowledge. -John Locke, “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” (1690)-

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Living our brief lives between the scales much bigger than an atom, yet much smaller than a galaxy, we forge our tools out of electricity, magnetism, and mathematics, and try to figure out how the whole thing works. We reach deep into the heart of matter for clues about the origin of the universe, and look to energetic messengers from the depths of space for reassurance that our curiosity will do us no harm, puzzling at the wonder and the unity of it all. -Stephen Reucroft and John Swain, Globe Correspondents (10/11/99)-

I must be off to patrol the moat.