How stuff works

[Stewie26]

I completely under the technical reasons how the airfoil shape of an airplane wing creates lift. But with that said, when on an airplane and looking out at the wings and realizing those little fins are lifting the weight of the plane plus the contents inside it is still Magic to me. Just sayin.

 

[slobake]

I had a friend who could wake up on Saturday morning, decide to build a deck in his backyard and have it done by Sunday night. Okay, that may be an exaggeration but he was one of those guys who could build or repair anything and hardly break a sweat. Sadly he succumbed to cancer.
I am not one of those guys, I am not a total klutz but I am not natural mechanic or builder either. I just sweat it out and keep at things until I get it right or close to right.
When we moved into our house there were a lot of things that needed work. The guy who lived there before should have had his tools burned and his hands broken.
I gutted the bathroom and remodeled it. I did okay but not great. My wife has since hired a contractor who did a much better job.
We had these disgusting barf green linoleum tiles in our entry way. I pulled up that up and put in some nice ceramic tiles. I remember pausing when I was almost done pulling up the linoleum and thinking "I wonder if this is asbestos? If it is , it's too late now." My wife has since hired a contractor who put in some nice stone tiles and leveled the concrete floor under them.
I also replaced all the old galvanized water pipes with copper. My wife has since ... wait for it ... done nothing and those pipes are still there. Hey at least one thing I did remains.
I also removed some unsafe electrical wiring and undid a lot of other things that my predecessor did. For instance, he installed an angle stop under the kitchen sink to turn the water off and on. He put it right next to the corner so that it was very difficult to turn. It was a real knuckle skinner. I moved that sucker over when I redid all the pipes.

 

[Gaolee]

There are a few things I don't do. Plumbing is one of 'em. It's all too straight forward, and it won't kill you if you do it wrong. Rebuilding the brakes on a racing motorcycle is more my kind of thing. And then racing it to see if it worked. Apparently it did, since nothing bad happened on account of brakes. And carpentry. Carpentry is a whole lot of fun, especially finish carpentry and furniture building. I get bored easily and hate tedious work, but somehow, all the fiddly work of fitting parts of a chair together and then the lengthy finishing process doesn't seem boring or tedious. Go figure.

 

[fhm555]

Not liking the fatality, liking the fact that caution is required. I have a couple small amps that I mess with, and discharging everything before getting into them is part of the routine.

back in the stone age when motorcycles still had points, i worked service at a local dealership. At the entrance to the service department was a big sign warning the public that insurance regs prohibited them from entering the shop but a bunch of people apparently believed this did not apply to them. We put a small table just inside the shop and salted it with a bunch of random small parts, including several fully charged ignition capacitors. I was amazed at the number of folks who not only couldn't read, they were also apparently never taught to keep their hands to themselves in other people's houses.

 

[Gaolee]

back in the stone age when motorcycles still had points, i worked service at a local dealership. At the entrance to the service department was a big sign warning the public that insurance regs prohibited them from entering the shop but a bunch of people apparently believed that did not apply to them. We put a small table just inside the shop and salted it with a bunch of random small parts, including several fully charged ignition capacitors. I was amazed at the number of folks who not only couldn't read, they were also apparently never taught to keep their hands to themselves in other people's houses.

Big capacitors can have quite a kick even if they aren't fatal. I had a crazy demonstration of this a few years ago when I had a late '80s Acoustic head. The late '80s versions didn't have quite the sub-station sized capacitors the earlier ones had, but big enough. I didn't keep playing through it after turning it off to discharge the capacitors. Then I didn't use it for a number of months. When I put it back on top of a cabinet and plugged the cabinet in, it made a resounding THUMP. I hadn't even plugged it in yet. It was the capacitors letting me know they were there and looking to bite something.

 

[Pilgrim]

That urge got me into all kinds of things when I was a kid. Some of them were kinda hard to explain when I couldn't put whatever it was back together. I still do all kinds of things, just to do them and see how they work. It drives my wife crazy, because it means I have endless projects. Two guitars in assembly stages, another guitar that needs fret leveling and some other work. A car with the engine mostly installed, lacking a few parts and time. A drum kit that will be assembled from salvaged shells and random parts. Recording projects, microphone assemblies and wiring, furniture, you name it.

I have learned to avoid doing things that are critical, like replacing the hot water heater, that I probably can't get done in a day. It took a while.

"Ah feel yore pain."

I have a rule for figuring out how long a project will take.

Step one: Estimate the MAXIMUM amount of time it could possibly take to complete it.

Step two: Double the estimate, then add half.

That's close to reality.

I need to see about getting that FilterTron installed in the hollowbody Univox...it has only been five years.....

And I know a parts store where the guys would get bored, charge up small caps, then put them back in the parts bin. Then they just waited for another guy to get careless and pick one up and get zapped.

 

[slobake]

Big capacitors can have quite a kick even if they aren't fatal. I had a crazy demonstration of this a few years ago when I had a late '80s Acoustic head. The late '80s versions didn't have quite the sub-station sized capacitors the earlier ones had, but big enough. I didn't keep playing through it after turning it off to discharge the capacitors. Then I didn't use it for a number of months. When I put it back on top of a cabinet and plugged the cabinet in, it made a resounding THUMP. I hadn't even plugged it in yet. It was the capacitors letting me know they were there and looking to bite something.

I was a phone tech a long time ago in a galaxy far away. Back then everything was analog POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service). Back then standard line voltage jumped up to 48 to 90 volts DC when ringing voltage was applied. (when the phone number was dialed and it rang the phone) We always initiated the new guys with a dirty trick.
"Let's test this line. Put one finger here and one finger here."
We would then dial the number and watch the new guy jump when ringing voltage charged into his fingers. It wasn't enough to really hurt anyone it was quite startling if you weren't prepared for it.

 

[Gaolee]

I was a phone tech a long time ago in a galaxy far away. Back then everything was analog POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service). Back then standard line voltage jumped up to 48 to 90 volts DC when ringing voltage was applied. (when the phone number was dialed and it rang the phone) We always initiated the new guys with a dirty trick.
"Let's test this line. Put one finger here and one finger here."
We would then dial the number and watch the new guy jump when ringing voltage charged into his fingers. It wasn't enough to really hurt anyone it was quite startling if you weren't prepared for it.

As a rural kid with more curiosity than brains, I once had to find out what an electric fence felt like. It's a pulse, or that one was, and it got my attention. Probably the same kind of thing, except it was self-inflicted. On account of more curiosity than brains. Some things don't change.

I have a patient wife. Thank goodness!

 

[slobake]

I build jeeps and 4wds, do motor swaps, change vehicles from carb to fuel injection, reverse engineer 30 years of backyard mechanic bandaids, do complete restorations on vehicles, rewire vehicles, fix motor swaps, drive and wheel vehicles and play music because it's the exact same never ending journey. Mechanics and theory I get, if I don't get it then I can step back and take a minute to digest it, correct what I am doing and the. I get it.
Here is what I don't understand...god...I believe in god but the magnitude is so incredibly huge that I can't wrap my brain around it. What or who is god and what does he or she want. That's all I have to add.

It is against the rules to talk about religion here. If you become a supporting member we have several discussion about religion in the lobby. You can also PM me if you have a question that I probably don't know how to answer.

 

[mapadofu]

I thought this series was called "How Stuff Works" but it is "The Secret Life of Machines",



Old-school, British, how stuff works.

 

[Pilgrim]

I was a phone tech a long time ago in a galaxy far away. Back then everything was analog POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service). Back then standard line voltage jumped up to 48 to 90 volts DC when ringing voltage was applied. (when the phone number was dialed and it rang the phone) We always initiated the new guys with a dirty trick.
"Let's test this line. Put one finger here and one finger here."
We would then dial the number and watch the new guy jump when ringing voltage charged into his fingers. It wasn't enough to really hurt anyone it was quite startling if you weren't prepared for it.

When I was a reserve deputy in the early 80's, one weekend we heard some odd noises from the dispatcher over the radio when her mic was open. Turned out that her telephone had a voltage leak, and every time she had her hand on the radio console and picked up the phone she was getting a shock. She became telephone-averse quite quickly, and it was soon fixed.