How Stuff Works

 

 

By Michael Nettleton

I’m no dummy.

No, this not a debate topic. (Sit down, Carolyn.)

But I’d be the first to admit . . . (Carolyn waving hand frantically to get my attention.) Okay, okay, I’d be the second to admit that figuring out technical and mechanical stuff is not my strength.

It took only about fifteen minutes of my freshman calculus class to send me skittering to another building to relaunch my scholastic career as a liberal arts major. I may not handle multi-level equations very well, but I can analyze the crap out of Shakespeare. You need to know how not to bump into the furniture on stage? I’m your guy. Great Hadron Collider or how to fix venetian blinds? Not so much.

Once, while working as a substitute librarian, I was shelving books in the science section. My eye fell upon a soft-covered volume called Quantum Physics for Dummies. I scooped it onto my soon-to-be empty cart and took it to the front desk, bravely entered my library card number, and checked that puppy out. How hard could it be? This book would lay QP out step-by-step. I felt my inner Stephen Hawking rising to the challenge. I could even swallow my pride and overlook the For Dummies part of the title. (Reference opening sentence.)

Later, at home, having spent a quality two hours trying to make my way through the opening chapter, my loving life partner Carolyn tapped me on the shoulder.

“You want I should call and have them bring the Jaws-of-Life?” She queried.

At that point, all I could produce, vocally, was a pathetic mewling that might have contained the words ”what?” and “for?”

“To twist your head around and get it facing the right direction on your shoulders,” she said, trying her best not to smirk.

Which brings us to LED lighting.

Recently, we had a fluorescent light in the garage flicker, then give up the ghost. Now I kinda-sorta understand how fluorescent lights work. A fluorescent lamp generates light from collisions in a hot gas ('plasma') of free accelerated electrons with atoms. Simple, yes? Okay, okay, I looked it up. But I’m within the general area code of understanding it.

Carolyn decided to replace the gassy/lighty thinggummy with an LED fixture. More energy efficient, longer lasting, better for the environment and blah, blah, blah.

 She had our neighbor Mr. Tool Belt install it, and it worked great. In fact, it was so bright, the first time she turned it on my immediate reaction was to yell “I’ll buy the negatives.” (If you’re younger than say, 45, there’s no chance you’ll get the joke. Unless you’re a fan of noir movies.)

Later, we were talking about our new light source and both admitted we had no idea how LEDs work. The odds of me not knowing something Carolyn also doesn’t know are astronomical. Right up there with picking 6 winning lottery numbers. This called for a drink and a quick trip to Wikipedia. Here’s what it says:

A light-emitting diode (LED) is a semiconductor light source that emits light when current flows through it. Electrons in the semiconductor recombine with electron holes, releasing energy in the form of photons.

“Electron holes. Photons. See, that would have been my guess.” I nodded.

“Ly-uhhh!!!” Carolyn crowed. “And what’s your definition of a photon?”

“It’s . . . err . . . um . . . A facsimile you use when you can’t afford a real tawn.”

“Brepppp!” She hit the B.S. buzzer. “What else does it say?”

The attainment of high efficiency blue LEDs was quickly followed by the development of the first white LED. In this device a Y₃Al₅O₁₂:Ce (known as "YAG" or Ce:YAG phosphor) cerium-doped phosphor coating produces yellow light through fluorescence. The combination of that yellow with remaining blue light appears white to the eye. 

“Oooh-kay! Of course,” I tried to sound assured. “Now it’s perfectly clear.”

“Breppppp!” Carolyn hammered the buzzer a second time. “Tell you what.”

“What?”

“How about we settle on a simple one-word explanation?”

Sensing my chance to stop dangling in the wind, I nodded. “Sounds good to me. What do you suggest?”

“I was thinking magic. We just agree it’s magic and move on.”

“You are the brains of the operation, aren’t you?”

She beamed. “I do my best. Do you have anything to add?”

“Well, there’s this. If you plow into the couch on stage and tumble ass-over-teakettle on top of the people sitting on it, stay in character and pretend you did it on purpose. The audience will never know.”

 

         

         

 

The Lure of the West

 

Carolyn J. Rose

 

My father, who was born and raised in the Catskill Mountains and lived there until he died, loved the West. As a child he read Zane Grey’s novels and other western adventures like those of the X Bar X boys. I still have a tattered copy of The X Bar X Boys Lost in the Rockies. It carries the scent of mildew now, but when I first opened it, perhaps 60 years ago, I was certain I smelled sage and pine, campfire smoke and scorching bacon.

 

There were always paperback western novels stacked on my father’s nightstand, books by Max Brand, Louis L’Amour, and others. If a western played at the local drive-in theater, we went. And he’d watch the programs TV had to offer in the 1950s—although he’d often point out the sameness of Hollywood-back-lot scenery. 

I don’t know if he’d ever intended to pull up roots generations deep, head west, and try his luck on the open range. Perhaps he did. But Pearl Harbor changed the trajectory of his life. He enlisted in the Army Air Corps and was sent east instead. He landed in the China-Burma-India Theater where he maintained planes and, as was required to insure the job was done right, went along on supply missions. Those missions took him over The Hump—the east end of the Himalaya Mountains. To say those missions were dangerous is a gross understatement.

 When he wasn’t flying or fixing, he lounged in his tent, swatting mosquitoes and trying to put aside fears about being shot at and shot down. He often imagined he was on the other side of the world, out on the plains, in the mountains and canyons. He passed the hours of boredom between flights by mentally living the kinds of adventures he’d read about. I imagine he saw himself herding cattle, shooting rattlesnakes, joining a posse, or simply gazing into the depths of a canyon or at the peaks of the Rockies.

 

He didn’t get to see the country he read so much about until the early 60’s when he packed us into the family station wagon, stuffed a small trailer with tents and camping gear, and headed that way. In six weeks, we saw the Mississippi River, the Great Plains, the towering Rockies, the Grand Canyon, and the geysers of Yellowstone. We saw the Painted Desert, Bryce Canyon, a cattle drive down the main street of a Wyoming town, and the Grand Tetons. We saw tumbleweeds and redwoods, bears and coyotes.

 

Oddly, the day we mounted up and went on a trail ride in the Rockies, the man who had imagined himself living a cowboy kind of life as World War II went on around him, didn’t come along. Instead, he waved us off and waited at the car.

Looking back, I like to think he recognized that riding a hired and tired horse with a dozen other tenderfeet would degrade or even demolish his dreams. So, he turned his back. And he preserved the images.

Me and Ma Nature

By Mike Nettleton 

I’ve always had a tenuous relationship with nature. Which is to say it both amazes me and scares me (bleep)less.

Once, while staying in a cabin on the property of Carolyn’s mother and father in the Catskill mountains of New York, a sound from outside the window made me sit bolt upright in bed. It was a loud, electric, hummy-chirpy-buzzy sound that seemed to envelop the whole structure.

“Relax, town boy,” my wife reassured me. “It’s just katydids. Go back to sleep.”

“Katy-whoozits?” My teeth chattered as I asked. “Are they predators?”

“No, silly, they have no desire to break in here and eat your brain.”

“Y . . . you’re sure?”

“It’d just be a light snack for them, anyway. They’re bush crickets. Insects. And this time of year, they’re in love.”

“Oh,” I said. “So, the sound they’re making is just katydid talk for ‘Hey baby, what’s your sign?’”

She snorted, punched me in the shoulder, and went back to sleep.

The other day, a coyote walked down the middle of our street, big as you please, and spent some time casing the neighborhood. They’re impressive-looking wild dogs and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want to encounter one while perambulating about. I made a note to myself to try not to look like a rump roast the next time I took a walk to the park and back.

I decided knowledge is power, so I Googled up “fun facts about coyotes” and came up with a sampler.    

• Coyotes are omnivores. Which means they don’t just eat small critters like rats, birds and schnauzers but are also partial to berries, vegetables and fallen fruit. So, if you’re worried that you might encounter one of these wild dogs, you might want to carry some broccoli with you.

• They’re monogamous and mate for life. Which makes coyote prenup agreements unnecessary paperwork. 

• They are fassssst! They’ve been clocked at 35-43 miles-per-hour. Contrary to what the cartoon would lead you to believe, they’re almost twice as fast as a roadrunner. However, it is true that they’re prone to ordering products from the Acme company that will blow up in their faces or fall off a cliff and brain them.

• Coyotes are, by far, the most vocal wild mammals in North America. Researchers have identified 11 different growls, huffs, woofs, yips, howls, whines, and yodels coming from the beast. (You can tell the ones that yodel, they’ll be wearing lederhosen.)

• And finally, this. Coyotes adapt well to city life. The one we saw on our street is not unique. Urban coyotes are less shy and more likely to eat cats, pet hamsters, and human-made food than their rural cousins. They’ll also munch ornamental fruits and seeds from non-native species like figs, grapes, and palms. Reportedly, (and this is especially timely with Christmas on the horizon) they are one of the few creatures on the planet that will voluntarily devour fruitcake.

 Well, it appears the coyote is still in the neighborhood. A quiche that was cooling on a windowsill has vanished and there are reports of yodeling in the vicinity. A neighborhood posse has been assembled to look for a neighbor’s missing duck. The pitchforks and blazing torches are a nice touch.

I’ll be honest, the idea of a renegade coyote in the vicinity spooks me a little. But at least no one has reported hearing any katydids.