Skip to main content

Are Wires Alvie?




The other day I watched a technician from my cable company's internet service install a "wireless" device so my wife could get the internet on her laptop. I also purchased a "wireless" printer. He connected something called a "router" (anyway that's what I thought he said) with a foot long cable to another device which I already had to connect to my desktop PC to the internet (I'm not sure what it's called). This was then connected to another cable that goes outside where it eventually disappears into the ground.

"Why are there so many wires? I thought this was going to be wireless."

"Yeah, it is," he said.

"But I don't understand. You have a wire connecting a device to another device that connects into the cable. Then there is a wire plugged into the electrical outlet. Then the printer is plugged into another electrical outlet. Then the laptop is plugged in so it can recharge its battery. Now I have more wires than I did before."

"I know but there's no wire going to the printer or the laptop," the tech said looking at me as if I was an idiot.

I kept quiet until he was finished. After he left I crawled under my desk to have a look. In vain I tried to see where each wire was connected. The wires were twisted into complicated knots. I'm sure that when I origionally connected my PC I tried to put the wires in orderly straight lines. Now it reminded me of the way ivy climbs a trellis or better yet the twisted vines of a wisteria bush. (See photo.)


My conclusion:
1. Maybe the wires somehow come to life and twist themselves together. I'm sure it only looks like they're alive.
or
2. Somehow the tension of the metal of the wires cause them to twist together. Maybe the electricity running through them causes a magnetic field that encourages this to happen.
or
3. It's just another phenomenon of science which has no clear cut explanation.

A MORE SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION:


Smith and UCSD colleague Dorian Raymer ran a series of homespun experiments in which they dropped a string into a box and tumbled it for 10 seconds (one revolution per second). They repeated the string-dropping more than 3,000 times varying the length and stiffness of the string, box size and tumbling speed.
Digital photos and video of the tumbling strings revealed: Strings shorter than 1.5 feet (.46 meters) didn't form knots; the likelihood of knotting sharply increased as string length went from 1.5 feet to 5 feet (.46 meters to 1.5 meters); and beyond this length, knotting probability leveled off.
The complete article link:

Comments

New Posts from Blogger Friends