Scientific explanation?

[Royce Meritt]

OK everybody...Does anyone have a scientific explanation for the fact that any time I drop a small object (screw, nut, bolt, small wooden piece, etc.) it will ALWAYS roll or bounce under my work bench just far enough that I can't reach it without getting down on my hands and knees? If I happen to be working at my bench in the middle of the shop this same part will ALWAYS roll to the exact center underneath the bench so as to be unreachable from ANY side of the bench.

Is this based on the same scientific principle as a cat always landing on its feet? Just wondering. Thanks. :D

[Christian Aufreiter]

OK everybody...Does anyone have a scientific explanation for the fact that any time I drop a small object (screw, nut, bolt, small wooden piece, etc.) it will ALWAYS roll or bounce under my work bench just far enough that I can't reach it without getting down on my hands and knees? If I happen to be working at my bench in the middle of the shop this same part will ALWAYS roll to the exact center underneath the bench so as to be unreachable from ANY side of the bench.

Is this based on the same scientific principle as a cat always landing on its feet? Just wondering. Thanks. :D

I'm not an expert (maybe an expert for dropping things :rolleyes: ) but I guess this sounds like the Chaos Theory. I don't know what it is but it seems right ;) .

Regards,

Christian

[Carl Eyman]

It has to do with the direction of the Earth's rotation. You know, the water going down the drain vortex the the other way below the equator. I'll bet our friends down under will tell us their screws always end up in the middle of the floor. :D

[bill walton]

It's the same principle that states the probability of Jellied toast falling jelly side down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.:D

[Kenneth Hertzog]

Royce
In my shop it has to do with how bad I need the part. Things I don't need fall straight down and lay. Things I have no replacement for roll so far away I may never find them or it will require moving a piece of equipment just to get close. Now thats just in my shop
ken
slippery rock, pa

[Jim Hager]

That is exactly the reason I have an old cb radio antena magnet on a string to retrieve lost ferrous items from underneath the machinery. Something about fate I guess. That is why you should never take out your false teeth while standing over the toilet:D

[Mike Cutler]

Hmm... well if we figure this one out, maybe we can figure out where all the pencils disappear to. I have no use whatsoever for a pencil outside of the shop, but I swear I can lose a hundred of them in a summer.
I don't know if our friends downunder can help us tho'. I went to Oz for a vacation and wanted to see if the toilet flushed in the opposite rotation of a toilet in the US, something about the corealis effect or something like that. I was really disappointed when they flushed straight back :eek: LOML wondered why she even bothered to bring me along on that trip.

[Randy Meijer]

Your situation is governed by a corollary of Murphy's Law known as the Neezennutz Corollary. Taught to every freshman shop student!!:D :D

[Martin Lutz]

Its got to do with the barometric pressure. As the pressure increases objects that are dropped are forced under the bench in front of you. As the presssure decreases the objects go under the bench behind. And the most common, as the pressure remains stable the object disappears completely. There is a lot of stable pressure in my shop.:)

[Dale Rodabaugh]

Cant answer your question,other than its probably some form of Murphys Law.:confused: :confused: :confused: I boght one of those heavy duty magnets,they have around most tool stores,for about 15 bucks.It is good for picking up small or large metal parts that fall on the floor.It has a round magnet,about 3 inches across,and is mounted on the end of a rod,about 3 ft long.sure beats getting down on the floor to look for a small screw,or small part.:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Bad Karma........what have you been doing in your life to deserve......Bad Karma? :eek: :rolleyes: :D

[Per Swenson]

Royce,

Jeez Louise any moron knows that answer,
Let S² be the oriented 2-sphere, S₀¹⊂S² its equator and R² the oriented plane. We denote by F(S², R²; S₀¹) the space of all dropped objects of S² to R² such that the singular set coincides with S₀¹. Here, a dropped object is a smooth bolt with only fold singularities. In 1970's, Eliashberg proved that F(S², R²; S₀¹) is homotopic to disjoint union of four circles. In his paper, he only mentioned that this is an application of his elegant theory, the homotopy principle for dropped objects. In this talk, we introduce another method to determine the number of connected components of F(S², R²; S₀¹). Comparing to Eliashberg's method, our method is concrete, combinatorial.

You got it now?

Per

[Jim Dunn]

Per I think it's F(1{S-2sphere}* speed of earth- time out for lunch+coffee and a cig)

[Steve Clardy]

I bought a magnetic just for that problem. But--------I dropped it and I guess it bounced up under some metal object in the shop and I can't find it.:( :rolleyes:

[Todd Davidson]

If Jeff S. drops his shiney new leather clad, monogrammed tape measure and it rolls inder his bench will the "Swenson Equation" bolstered with Rare Earth Magnets enable retrieval?

[lou sansone]

hmm lots of interesting answers.. you do have a good philosophical question and a "scientific" one as well. All of it has to do with the second law of theromdynamics and the concept of Entropy. The laymans deffinition is that in a closed system things go from a state order to disorder and not the other way around. This fact is counted on when trying to desolve to chemicals together. If they became more orderly they would never mix! Entropy also has pretty big philosophical implications that I will not go into here because of the SMC rules

enjoy
lou

[Steve Rowe]

Hmmm? I also noticed this when working on my car, the nut drops and rolls to the exact center of the car everytime . It must be magic. I wonder if this violates Heisenbergs uncertainty principal? You do realize that if you engaged your anti-gravity machine you wouldn't need to worry about dropping the item but, then you would have a few other problems.:D

[Aaron Koehl]

Royce,

Jeez Louise any moron knows that answer,
Let S<SUP>2</SUP> be the oriented 2-sphere, S<SUB>0</SUB><SUP>1</SUP>⊂S<SUP>2</SUP> its equator and R<SUP>2</SUP> the oriented plane. We denote by F(S<SUP>2</SUP>, R<SUP>2</SUP>; S<SUB>0</SUB><SUP>1</SUP>) the space of all dropped objects of S<SUP>2</SUP> to R<SUP>2</SUP> such that the singular set coincides with S<SUB>0</SUB><SUP>1</SUP>. Here, a dropped object is a smooth bolt with only fold singularities. In 1970's, Eliashberg proved that F(S<SUP>2</SUP>, R<SUP>2</SUP>; S<SUB>0</SUB><SUP>1</SUP>) is homotopic to disjoint union of four circles. In his paper, he only mentioned that this is an application of his elegant theory, the homotopy principle for dropped objects. In this talk, we introduce another method to determine the number of connected components of F(S<SUP>2</SUP>, R<SUP>2</SUP>; S<SUB>0</SUB><SUP>1</SUP>). Comparing to Eliashberg's method, our method is concrete, combinatorial.

You got it now?

Per

Again with S<SUP>2</SUP> defined to be the oriented 2-sphere, S<SUB>0</SUB><SUP>1</SUP>⊂S<SUP>2</SUP> its equator and R<SUP>2</SUP> the oriented plane, and arguing to the general case, we extend the notion further through empirical results of work by Murphy that no known deterministic algorithm exists to determine the vector components of elements in F (a vector space we'll call L, interpreted as "Lost"). Given the O(1) verification algorithm, which is polynomial in N, whose results ⊂ {Lost, Not Lost}, and that the only known deterministic search is combinatorial O(N!), we conclude that solving for L ⊂ F(S<SUP>2</SUP>, R<SUP>2</SUP>; S<SUB>0</SUB><SUP>1</SUP>) is NP-complete.

[Bob Winkler]

You took the words right out of my mouth (or in this case, keyboard).:confused:
Bob

[Hank Knight]

The phenomenon is explained by the Law of The Perversity of Matter.
There's a great story about a meeting between Henry Kissenger and Leonid Breshnev. Kissenger made a joking reference to "The Law of Perversity of Matter." Breshnev missed the joke and told Kissenger he was not familar with the law. Kissenger explained that the law is best illustrated by the fact that a coin dropped on the ground will roll away from you rather than towards you 8 times out of 10. Breshnev still didn't get it.

[Royce Meritt]

The phenomenon is explained by the Law of The Perversity of Matter.
There's a great story about a meeting between Henry Kissenger and Leonid Breshnev. Kissenger made a joking reference to "The Law of Perversity of Matter." Breshnev missed the joke and told Kissenger he was not familar with the law. Kissenger explained that the law is best illustrated by the fact that a coin dropped on the ground will roll away from you rather than towards you 8 times out of 10. Breshnev still didn't get it.

My coin only rolled away from me 7 out of 10 times (yep, I REALLY did try it)but that's still too many! Thanks for all of the insight everyone. Many of you gave me some great food for thought. Others of you really need to get a life!! (Who am I to talk, right? I'm the one who asked the question to start with. So if some of you do find a life let me know where I can get one as well.) :D

[Lee DeRaud]

Hmmm? I also noticed this when working on my car, the nut drops and rolls to the exact center of the car everytime.That's a variation of O'Brian's Postulate: "The strongest force in the universe is the attraction between a Frisbee and the underside of a parked vehicle."

Or, as we called it, "Car Suck".

[Per Swenson]

Aaron,
So young and you know string therory.
Thats is simply amazing.
Really.

Per

[Justin Peters]

It has been proven that cats always land on their feet. Similarly, if you drop a piece of toast, it will usually fall jelly side down.

So, for those of you who are quite obviously excellent at physics, would you please post a theorem on the following problem?

If you tie down a piece of toast to the back of a kitty in such a manner that the jelly side is facing up, and then you toss said kitty in the air, how would the kitty/toast/jelly assembly land? (Or would it hover midair?)

[Don Baer]

here you go, work it out for yourself.


<TABLE cellSpacing=3 cellPadding=2 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD align=middle>http://www2.slac.stanford.edu/vvc/theory/mathfigs/eq-gamma.gif</TD><TD>c is the speed of light
v is the speed of the object in question</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>

[Vaughn McMillan]

Royce,

Jeez Louise any moron knows that answer,
Let S² be the oriented 2-sphere, S₀¹⊂S² its equator and R² the oriented plane. We denote by F(S², R²; S₀¹) the space of all dropped objects of S² to R² such that the singular set coincides with S₀¹. Here, a dropped object is a smooth bolt with only fold singularities. In 1970's, Eliashberg proved that F(S², R²; S₀¹) is homotopic to disjoint union of four circles. In his paper, he only mentioned that this is an application of his elegant theory, the homotopy principle for dropped objects. In this talk, we introduce another method to determine the number of connected components of F(S², R²; S₀¹). Comparing to Eliashberg's method, our method is concrete, combinatorial.

You got it now?

Per
Per, ya lost me at "Let", but I'm sure you're right. ;)

- Vaughn

[Lee DeRaud]

It has been proven that cats always land on their feet. Similarly, if you drop a piece of toast, it will usually fall jelly side down.

So, for those of you who are quite obviously excellent at physics, would you please post a theorem on the following problem?

If you tie down a piece of toast to the back of a kitty in such a manner that the jelly side is facing up, and then you toss said kitty in the air, how would the kitty/toast/jelly assembly land? (Or would it hover midair?)Don't try this in a house with vaulted ceilings: the cat goes straight up, leaves a big smear of jelly on a highly-visible but hard-to-clean chunk of ceiling, then falls straight down and leaves a big smear of cat on a highly-visible but hard-to-clean chunk of carpet. DAMHIKT.

[Jim Dunn]

Don, where's the time for the cig and coffee. Or gum and tea????

[lou sansone]

here you go, work it out for yourself.


<TABLE cellSpacing=3 cellPadding=2 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD align=middle>http://www2.slac.stanford.edu/vvc/theory/mathfigs/eq-gamma.gif</TD><TD>c is the speed of light

v is the speed of the object in question
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>

Hi don
so you are saying that gamma blows up to infinity as the velocity of the lost object approaches the speed of light?

lou

[Brent Beelby]

It is a well known fact in Physics that during their research into the particles of matter that the outcome of tests were not concluding as they had predicted they would. Upon further investigation, the physists realized that the behavior of matter (particles) can be altered by the mere fact that it is "being observed".

So, I think it is a matter of you watching the screw fall and thinking "Darn, there goes another one!" that causes them to always land beyond reach under the bench. :cool:
Brent

[Steve Clardy]

Well. I am getting absoutely O outa this thread. You all are 20 feet above my brain cells on this one!!! LOl

[Bruce Volden]

OK, Ill have a go?? There. Also has anyone noticed that gravity gets stronger as you get older??

[Joseph O'Leary]

Bruce, That observable fact is clearly defined in Newtons law of gravity.

G=g(M1xM2/RxR), where g is a constant, M1 is the mass of the earth, M2 is the ever increasing mass of the aging individual, and r is the ever decreasing distance between the earth and the sagging mass of said individual. ;)

[Lee DeRaud]

Also has anyone noticed that gravity gets stronger as you get older??I keep hearing that used as the reason why you get shorter as you get older. My problem is, I think I must be getting taller as I get older, because I keep bumping my head on stuff out in the garage that I never had problems with before.:eek:

[Steve Rowe]

Bruce, That observable fact is clearly defined in Newtons law of gravity.

G=g(M1xM2/RxR), where g is a constant, M1 is the mass of the earth, M2 is the ever increasing mass of the aging individual, and r is the ever decreasing distance between the earth and the sagging mass of said individual. ;)
Yes - plus it is backed by the empirical evidence of dunlops disease. Belly has 'dun loped' over the belt.

[Aaron Koehl]

Cliff's notes version:

1. You drop it
2. You can't find it.

:D

[Steve Clardy]

Cliff's notes version:

1. You drop it
2. You can't find it.

:D

Now my brain can relate to that one Aaron.:D
Nice and simple.:)