How Things Work

Have you ever wondered how things work? I figured out how the toilet's cistern works so I could fix it without having to pay a repairman to do it. I recently managed to change a light switch in our lounge room without electrocuting myself or frying our apartment's wiring.

It bothers me just a little bit that there are things I see everyday and I don't know how they work. It bothers me because sometimes we take things for granted and don't take the trouble to figure out what makes them tick.

You have absolutely no idea what I'm going on about, do you?

Let's give an example, one that I often think about - traffic lights. How in the world do these things work? I mean, does the traffic flow twenty miles up the road affect your intersection? Certainly if a train causes the boom-gates to shut at this intersection, it will have an effect on the next intersection (perhaps a longer or shorter green light, depending on the direction of traffic). The traffic flow at that intersection will have an effect on its neighbouring intersections etc, etc, etc - until when? How far and in how many directions does the train crossing impact on the various connected intersections? A person could go through life not knowing the answer to this question.

W-Class trams are another example. You probably don't see them around too much (especially in Ramat Beit Shemesh), but if you ever peeked into the driver's cabin you would probably have noticed a wheel and a lever or two. As a kid I would try to see how the drivers actually drove the big green contraptions. From the outside, all you saw was a driver standing straight. You never saw the driver's hands move.

I also want to know how they roll up the sticky-tape in the factory and why it all doesn't just stick together in a huge jumble.

I want to know how you train a bird to return to you - wouldn't it just fly away the first time you let it go?

If you have any answers to these earth-shattering questions, let me know.