Laughter
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
Question: Write about a use of an electromagnet. In a scrap yard’s crane an electromagnet has to be used. This is because if it were a normal magnet the crane would pick up a car/can/lobster, fine, but not be able to drop it at its desired location, bad. The crane would need to shake violently to dislodge the object. Thus some bright spark named Juambi ( for that was his name0 decided to use an electromagnet. This enabled the magnetism to be turned on and off at will. Now the crane can pick up a car/can/lobster and move it to where it needs to be dropped, switch the magnet off and so the said object will begin it’s decent. "Wow!," Said all the spectators, "that’s amazing!" and they awarded him the ‘picking up scrap’ award 1937. However, shortly afterwards, he walked beneath the crane, was picked up and dropped in the pile of rubbish. And so Juambi was sadly lost forever."How was he picked up by a magnet?" one, namely you who is reading, may ask. Well, a short explanation follows:- In March of 1937 a woman by the name of Ba (pronounced new-ambi-flw-clar-niotok-jane the second), living in London, discovered something. This something was quite extraordinary. In fact quite fascinating. It was this. Not actually ‘this’ but this which doth provedeth aftereth. For many years hair replacement had been failing and most of the transplanted hair would just migrate back to the cow from whence they came. Most of the hair was sadly run over on the roads surrounding the farm and those which discovered hitchhiking often got lost as they could not speak. So Ba, in her lab in South Kensington was playing with some electrical wire when she….. Nope not: moved it through a magnetic filed and, according to Flemmings Right Hand Rule, created a current in a known direction. Ahh ha! Tricked you there. No, she found that some of the transplanted hairs were attracted towards the wire and wanted to be it’s friend. And so the ‘Wire is a cool thing’ principal was borne.Well Juambi had a pet turtle who followed him everywhere, although usually he would catch up with Johnny before he had managed to move 5 metres. Johnny, being of the turtle form, was a turtle and so had a shell. Juambi thought the shell was a tad hard and not particularly comfortable to sit on1
, and so decided to have a hair input. However, every time this was done, on a Wednesday afternoon during a coffee brake the hair would sneak of the turtles back and slip out of the back gate. One particular Wednesday, Johnny was reading the ‘Not Quite Quick Enough Daily Sloth’ (a local evening newspaper) and read about Ba’s work and started frantically pointing at it. Juambi read this and the following day Johnny had this wiry head of hair (or rather shell of something which isn’t quite hair).Two months later Juambi was walking along carrying Johnny heading for the vending machine when what did they hear? It was a grinding screeching sound coming from above them. He looked up just as a small relay switch, incorporating an electromagnet, switched on a high voltage circuit which incorporated a previous Juambi design ‘Metal Sticker Thingie-m-bob (™)’. Johnny was sucked up with Juambi attached and as they hung there they saw the evil vending machiniac at the cranes controls."Now I’ve got you Johnny. This is for all those times I’ve wanted to read the ‘Not Quite Quick Enough Evening Sloth’ and you’ve never let me."With this he switched of the tiny transistor circuit which in turn turned off the electromagnet and Johnny and Juambi fell into a large scrap yard heap never to be found again.Rumours have it they set up a ‘Metal Sticker Thingie-m-bob (™)’ retail organisation for sloth’s in Western East Chilli.Moments later the evil vending machiniac was beamed aboard an alien spacecraft (run coincidentally on electromagnets) 300 metres above a rather shallow bottomless pit. The alien ship didn’t really exist (I mean, aliens!?) and so there vending machiniac fell and fell. And fell, fell, fell some more, before eventually falling continuously forever. There are no rumours as to what the vending machiniac may or may not be doing now, except possibly falling.
1This comes with a safety announcement. Do not sit on your turtle. Flat turtle support group.
