I’m wondering if my co-workers have noticed that I smell faintly of women’s perfume today.  Could be embarrassing if they knew the full story.  I know my wife is disappointed and saddened. 

It turns out that my wife’s perfume bottle has a superb atomizer and on a whim I realized that if I spritz a shot of perfume at a aromatherapy candle in our bedroom it makes a most satisfying whoosh-like ball of  flame – sort of a mini special effects explosion on our dresser.  The perfume is evocative, mysterious, haunting, provocative (their words), and mostly alcohol (my hypothesis – presumably correct).  My wife was bemused on so many levels and finally stepped in to point out that my experiments were both dangerous and fairly expensive.

It got me wondering what percentage of mankind’s scientific advances were catalyzed by someone just messin’ around to see what happens.   

I will never forget the expression of total glee on my father’s face many years ago when he guessed (correctly) that our brand new family microwave was most likely operating at the same frequency necessary to illuminate a common fluorescent bulb.  He immediately disassembled my mom’s bathroom vanity mirror, wedged the bulb into our new kitchen appliance, gathered the family and turned the dial. Sparks were ricocheting off the metal bulb bases and the device was making a frightening zapping/sizzling noise but he still fairly danced with delight as the bulb began to glow – a cool spectacle and wireless miracle for us.

Apparently the apple does not fall far from the tree. 

The “what-if” gene can have tragic consequences – think of Marie Curie, pioneer in the field of radioactivity and winner of two Nobel prizes who most certainly died of radiation poisoning resulting from her experiments.  The damaging effects of ionizing radiation were not then known, and much of her work had been carried out in a shed, without taking any safety measures. She had carried test tubes containing radioactive isotopes in her pocket and stored them in her desk drawer, remarking on the pretty blue-green light that the substances gave off in the dark.

You think dad would know better.

Of course today, a quick trip to Youtube can scratch your “what-if” gene from behind the safety of your computer monitor.   Want to start your BBQ with liquid oxygen?  Pepsi and Mentos?  Blend your iPhone?  Perhaps the cumulative effect of our exposure to everyone else’s what-ifs will bring a collective power to the age-old “let’s see what happens”.  I’m not sure.  Youtube doesn’t quite do justice to the sight of a modest mushroom cloud of flame rising over my wife’s jewelry box.  You’ve simply got to see that one first hand.

Looks like Toyota is headed for a software fix for the Prius brakes.  Weirdly enough, I feel like I have a personal intersection with Toyota’s alleged ABS brake difficulty.  I own a 1997 Toyota 4-runner.  Several times in the life of that car I have experience a complete loss of braking – always when braking while riding over significant bumps.  The first time it happened was weird… but not overly terrifying.  I quickly assumed the failure was being caused by “resonance” or the unhappy combination of the ABS choosing to brake when a wheel was virtually mid-air and then releasing just as the wheel hit the ground as the wheels bounced over the bumps.  If this explanation is right it could and perhaps should have been solved by tuning the ABS braking frequency to ensure that the natural frequency of the suspension could never match the ABS braking rate.  

Perhaps this explanation is naïve or just plain wrong.  Regardless I am left to wonder if my 1997 car suffers from the same flaws as the 2010 Toyotas.  Is it possible that these cars share the same basic control strategies and algorithms even after all these years???  If so this highlights a weakness of platform engineering and presenting a pretty damning portrait of their ability to spot and eradicate problems.  I’ve never experienced this phenomena on any other car I’ve ever driven.  Alternately perhaps it’s the same engineering team making the same mistakes year after year.  It is ironic that as an engineer I simply wrote this off to a freak combination of speed, bumps and possibly a sloppy -  but not criminal – job of engineering.  The brakes on the 4-runner have always been pretty marginal and even need to be pumped a few times in very cold weather before they’ll work.  Like many engineers I think I’m perhaps too tolerant of design related issues.