Everyday problems: Why does not this work?
The coin diarrhea
One million vending machines spit out cigarettes, coke or fish bait for coins in Germany. But a few tens of thousands of times a day, real coins simply fall through. The problem has been annoying for more than a hundred years: In 1887, the sweets company Stollwerck set up the first vending machine (for chocolate!) In Germany and in 1888 it was possible to pull chewing gum at the vending machine in New York's subway stations.
Seven years later, the vending machine-damaged Benjamin Reich of the New York Times sorrowed, "I've penned Penny for penny, good, decent coins, and all I got for it was pleasure, hammered against the machine, and my hand light to have hurt. " The scratch marks on today's vending machines document that this old problem still occurs: the denial of coins. Why? "On the one hand coins are marked with a certain margin of tolerance, and the wear in the money traffic then it comes to astonishing fluctuations - genuine euro coins are very different heavy and thick." Therefore, coin acceptors beat even with some real coins false alarm "explains Burkhard Armborst, spokesman of the machine operator Tobacco country. He sells 175 million cigarette packs a year at more than 100,000 machines.
The scratch marks also prove that a myth keeps tedious: that it helps to rub the coins against metal. But not true, says Armborst: "Rubbing does not help."
Tip: But it helps to throw in the once rejected coin again. Because if the weight, mass and material of the coin are very close to the tolerance threshold of the examiner, he can accept them on the second attempt - no matter whether you rub before or not.
Stroller: four hands for folding
Push, fumble, curse. A stroller has only a few functions, but even those are inoperable in some noble model. Product testers and parents complain: The manuals are as incomprehensible as the mechanics.
If you have never pushed a baby through the area, you will be surprised - many baby vehicles cost as much as a new car as much as a laptop. By comparison, a portable computer gathers a variety of processors, memory chips, and other electronic components into a ridiculously tiny area, and does just about anything from a stereo to a television.
A pram is made of plastic, metal and fabric and has just five basic tasks to perform - it has to be comfortable and safe, roll well, fold up and lock reliably. But the operation of some baby scooters is madly difficult, tell pram owners and write prams.
For example, the Stiftung Warentest, which accounted for the practical part of a comparison test of 15 models in 2006: "Frequently, the parents criticized a cumbersome folding and unfolding, which can usually only be done with two free hands and powerful pulling or pushing." Two years later, it is still not easy to collapse, reported 2008 the Swiss test magazine K-Tipp.
Together with the Swiss television SF1, the editors had an institute test ten baby carriages in the lab and in practice. As the only guide to the operation, the parents received the original manual of the respective model. Conclusion of the testers in terms of operability when folding: "In some, this is very easy, others have a safety mechanism that is difficult to understand without instructions."
Of testers often lamented weight of some stroller models, the manufacturer as completely normal. After all, these are particularly sturdy off-road models. Say: Whoever buys a particularly sturdy pram, should not complain about the weight.
Tip: Buy a buggy and move to the countryside. For example, in the North German Plain. Since it is not so crowded, no one pushes (where to?) And you never have to lift prams, because in this Pampa everything is superbly ground level.
Seeing little stars: the thing about password masking
For decades programmers hide the passwords behind asterisks. Anyone who logs on to web services does not see what he is typing, and incorrectly writes the complicated passwords. Why? Because that has always been so.
At some point, computers were even rarer than ATMs.Dozens of students crowded in front of the few computer terminals at the universities and looked over the happy guy who was typing in his passwords. Since it was quite convenient that when typing in passwords instead of letters only asterisks were seen.
Today things look a bit different: Everybody has to remember a dozen passwords for the computers in the office and at home, the mobile phone and a lot of websites (e-mail, photo page, cooking recipe portal). The difference to the time when someone invented the asterisk as password masking and made it a standard: Today, most have their own computer (often two), and in most cases when typing no crowd behind them.
Because you never see what you are typing thanks to the asterisks, every day a login attempt fails with the sentence "Password or username not correct". One doubts: Did you register with the cat photo site but with a pseudonym? Or did you just typed 7856 instead of 7586 in the password field? So you enter the secret word again and again, letter by letter - and if you are lucky, you can do it after three attempts to enter the keyword correctly.
Tip: If the software does not show what you're writing, the user just has to write what the programs show. Does something speak against passwords like *******?
Shoelaces: darned and constricted
Your shoelaces never last? Then tie the wrong knots. That's why millions of people stumble over their own feet. Perfect shoe grinding techniques are easy to learn. Mathematicians have researched the best.
Paul Ives will never forget that sight - it was too funny: when the Briton came home from work in August 2008, a man was hanging in the broken down ground-floor window of his quiet little house in Dartford, UK. Upside down, on the laces of his sneaker, which had caught on the outside of the window frame. The man hanging in the living room had a hammer in his hand and swore to the summoned police officer, "I've been following a burglar." Two months later, the burglar was convicted. The BBC headlined: "Knast for the lace burglar".
The Shoestring Burglar is one of many news on the side of Ian Fieggen, an Australian computer scientist who has been fighting for years against shoe loops opening at the wrong moment. Some of the shoe-lace accidents in Fiege's archive are absurd, many tragic: people drown, get run over, race into buildings with their cars - all because of shoe loops that open at the wrong moment.
There's a desperate cry for a few tips to make the shoelaces better again. Mathematician Fieggen has a few. The 46-year-old programmer analyzes various methods for binding shoe loops since 1982, looks after the most extensive website on the subject and has published one of the standard works in this field (Laces: 100s of Ways to Pimp Your Kicks).
The most common mistake in shoe binding: people actually want to tie a loop with a reef or cross knot (which would be quite safe), but habitually make an old-woman knot that loosens much easier.
Tip: In order to give up a long-trained old-woman knot routine, you have to bind your shoes very slowly and deliberately for a few days. Anyone who wants can invest this effort immediately to learn a completely different looping knot. Ian Fieggen has a few to choose from on his pages, and more can be found in the book A Mathematical Guide to the Best (and Worst) Ways to Lace Your Shoes by mathematician Burkhard Polster.
Frustration with nasty cling films
Tear off, wrap, pick up? Are you kidding me? Are you serious when you say that! To get hold of a scoop of cling film, amateur cooks usually have to tug at the roll for a long time. Physicists prove: Many slides prefer to stretch rather than tear.
Advertisers have the cling film already made all imaginable compliments - "sheer" is it, this "film with adhesive effect," said the manufacturer Melitta 1965 at the launch in Germany. Later, advertisements raved about the "breathing", even the "extra cuddly" foil. If this filigree, tender kitchen help really does exist, then she has unpleasant kinship, which looks very much like her.
The victims of the twin complain on the Internet their suffering. As people write, they would already "get the crisis" when tearing off the nasty slide. Because "The pack has so tough, but the film never tears as I want it.Most often I need a meter (or two), until I've ever demolished a useful piece."
Since no foil producer wants to say anything more about his fresh-keeping pathways, doctoral students of physics professor Armin Gölzhäuser at the University of Bielefeld have studied with great effort, which distinguishes the tough from the pleasant slides. Result: It can not be due to the thickness of the foils alone, anything in the chemical composition must be different. Because the cheaper films stretch very strong before they break at all.The easy to tear film can hardly stretch, tears off immediately. Tip: Write a thesis on cling film, design (and patent!) The perfect cling film cutter. And privately you use the best secret aluminum foil, otherwise the slide projects never something.
The power strip: Please press firmly at the back!
If you want to save a little electricity and protect the environment, you have to stoop daily: in front of the TV, under the desk, in the hallway, next to the speakers - to properly switch off power consumers and disconnect them from the mains. The turn-off power strip is considered as power saving tip par excellence.
If you are against the fact that the lights of the TV, DVD player, computer and other technical gadgets illuminate the apartment all night long, plug the devices into a power strip with a central switch - and then turn them off. Only in most of these power strips, the switch sits at the wrong end, where the cable comes out that connects the power strip to the power outlet.
Why one still sees in the hardware store mountains on power strips with Bückschaltern explains engineer Peter Leunig, the special electronics designs: "lethargy, carelessness of marketing, lack of customer focus, manufacturers fear the higher price of about one euro in a fierce price war."
But if you want to spend a little more money (around 20 euros) and looking for long enough, also finds easy-to-use power strips - perhaps not in the hardware store, rather in the electronics store and certainly online.
Tip: Warm up, stretch, loosen - then try on the power strip. The health insurance companies offer owners of conventional power strips free brochures with tips for correct operation. For chronic back problems, there may be a subsidy for the purchase of a radio-controlled socket with remote control.
The shoe squeaks, the sole pupst
Anyone who wears sneakers squeals at inappropriate moments like a clown walking, especially on the floors in churches, museums and old castles. Blame are the physics and repeatedly changing rubber mixtures of the manufacturer.
If completely new shoes with plastic soles noise, one can still hope. Jochen Rolle, Footwear Director at outdoor equipment supplier Jack Wolfskin explains: "New shoes may initially experience a squeaking noise when too much release agent is used in the production process, and this release agent is used to get the baked soles well out of the molds. "
But there are other reasons as well. Hollow soles for example: Some plastic soles contain damping elements in EVA or PU midsoles. If different materials are glued or sprayed together and baked, and these surfaces are "not quite firmly connected, they can rub against each other and possibly cause noise," explains the expert from Jack Wolfskin.
Or insoles: If the insoles break in on every occurrence, sometimes some talcum powder helps. Take out the insole, sprinkle some of the powder in the shoes, put on the sole and chances are that the noise will disappear.
When noble shoes with leather soles creak loudly, squeak or creak, leather usually rubs against leather. Often only a shoemaker can help - laymen can hardly get close to the noise sources.
Tip: If your squeaky shoes annoy you, just lock them up in the closet in a closet and reopen it in ten years time. Then you'll love that sound (youth sound, etc.), their shoes are worth a small fortune, and if you still pick up and sell the squeal, you'll make millions with sneaker-sound downloads.
More technical nuisances and their solution can be found in:
Konrad Lischka: malfunction. Why cling film never just breaks off and other everyday annoyances. Goldmann 224 p., 8.95 euros
