Heisenberg’s Car Charging Apparatus
This story is actually from back in September but I’m just getting around to entering it.
I was up at Seneca Lake in September. Will was having trouble getting his van started. He tried putting one of those portable nicad battery chargers on it for a few hours but that didn’t really help. He recharged the nicad pack and tried again the next day to no avail. We tried jumper cables from my car to his van and let it sit for 5 minutes. That worked a little to bring his battery back but still not enough to start the van. Then I had a thought… I had my radio controlled airplane stuff with me so I plugged my airplane battery charger into his cigarette lighter. You see, my charger has a voltmeter on it. I wanted to check the resting voltage of his battery. I saw that his battery was generating 12.88 volts, which should be plenty of juice to start his van.
After checking the voltage, his van cranked right over! It’s Heisenberg’s Uncertainty principle at work! Until we measured the voltage, we didn’t know if there was enough… so the van wouldn’t start. But then when we knew how much voltage there was, it -had- to work!
(Yes, this is a completely true story)