All's Fair in Love and Prank War
One thing that can get frustrating in engineering school is that all the coursework tends to feel somewhat removed from reality. Because students need to be able to complete their assignments in a reasonable amount of time and their solutions need to be somewhat uniform and grade-able, engineering homework and test problems will often be very narrow and/or unrealistic. For this reason I think it’s beneficial to pursue extracurricular projects related to engineering, both to solidify concepts learned in class and also to remind oneself of the usefulness of the information. While there are a variety of such activities that students can and do engage in, perhaps none are more entertaining or satisfying than messing with your friends.
One of the guys I live with enjoys waking up in the morning to the smooth intonations of NPR personalities. As such he has a radio alarm clock permanently set to the local public radio station. Unfortunately he is an early riser, the walls of our house are paper thin, and he is not reliably around to silence his automatically activated listening device. To the untrained individual this might seem like an interpersonal issue, however I immediately recognized it as an engineering problem, and pursued the following solution:
Pictured here is my friend’s alarm clock, partially disassembled so that the device’s malfunction might be more easily demonstrated.
Over the years, I’ve made a point of assembling sufficient tools to deal with many common technical problems.
In this close-up of the back panel of the clock, you can see the heart of the problem: Some sort of errant analog part (I believe it’s an inductive coil) that unfortunately produces all sorts of loud noises early in the morning.
Luckily, I was able to ascertain that the part was non-critical, and so I disconnected it -
- and removed it.
The clock still functioned perfectly.
There was no need to concern my friend with this minor repair, so I took the liberty of replacing the clock in his room where I had found it.
Unfortunately for me I’d underestimated my friend’s technical impulses. After unintentionally oversleeping he’d taken it upon himself to disassemble his radio alarm clock, whereupon he discovered that the speaker was conspicuously absent from the assembly. He barged into my room (waking me up, funnily enough) and demanded its return.
“Be careful Simon,” he warned me, “I don’t know if you want to go down this road; next thing you know I’ll take the alternator out of your car.”
“You don’t know how to take out an alternator,” I retorted.
“Wrong,” he said “I don’t know how to take one out cleanly.”
So ended the first chapter of my collegiate prank war. Its continuance is anyone’s guess, but it was a great way to procrastinate an afternoon.