The following is an article from Bathroom Readers' Institute 13th edition Uncle John's All-Purpose Extra Strength Bathroom Reader.
HistoryThe sentiment expressed in Murphy's Law, "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong," has probably been around as long as there have been things to go wrong. In 1786, for example, Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote, "The best laid schemes o' mice an men gang aft a-gley [are prone to go awry]." But the official Murphy's Law is much more recent. In fact, it's barely 50 years old. [50 when the book was first printed, now it is almost 60 years old - Ed.] Hot SeatThe rocket sled ride ridden by Lt. Col. John Stapp (Image Source: Edwards Air Force Base History Office) In 1949, the U.S. Air Force conducted a series of tests on the effect of rapid deceleration on pilots, so they could get a better understanding of how much force people's bodies can tolerate in a plane crash. The tests, part of what was known as Project MX981, consisted of strapping volunteers into a rocket-propelled sled, accelerating the sled, and then slamming on the brakes - bringing the sled to a very abrupt stop. The volunteers wore special harness fitted with 16 sensors that measure the acceleration, or G-forces, on different parts of their body. The harness was the invention of an Air Force captain named Edward A. Murphy ... but the 16 individual sensors were installed by someone else. Brake DownOn the day of the fateful test, a volunteer named John Paul Stapp was strapped into the sled and the rockets were fired. The test went off as expected - the sled accelerated to a high speed and then abruptly braked to a stop, subjecting his body to such enormous forces that, according to one account, when he stumbled off the sled, his eyes were bloodshot and his nose was bleeding. Stapp's body is believed to have endured forces equivalent to 40G, or 40 times the force of gravity. But no one will ever know for sure, because all 16 of the sensors failed, each one giving a zero reading for the test. When Murphy examined the harness to see what had gone wrong, he discovered that the technician who had installed the sensors had wired every single one of them backward. Because of a simple human error, Stapp's life had been put at risk in vain. There are varying accounts of what Murphy said next - he may have cursed out the technician responsible for the mistake, saying "If there is any way to do it wrong, he'll find it." Whatever he said originally, at a press conference a few days later Stapp quoted him as having said, "If there are two or more ways to do something and one of those results in a catastrophe, then someone will do it that way." Within months, this expression had became known throughout the aerospace industry as "Murphy's Law." First VictimThis first version of Murphy's Law might never have become known beyond the participants of Project MX981 had it not been a very sound design and engineering principle. The sensors in Murphy's harness failed not just because they had been installed backward, but also because they were capable of being installed backward. Had they been designed so they could only be installed one way - the correct way - they would never have failed in the first place. A few days later, Murphy himself redesigned the sensors so that they could only be installed one way, and the problem never came up again. (Murphy's Law is why two-pronged electrical plugs are now designed with one prong slightly larger than the other - so they can be plugged in the proper way.) Murphy's Law became a popular principle throughout the aerospace industry, and from there it spread to the rest of the world. But as it spread it also evolved into the popular, more pessimistic form, "If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong." The Science of Murphy's LawSince 1949, any number of permutations of Murphy's Law have arisen, dealing with subjects as diverse as missing socks and buttered bread falling to the floor. As the BRI's own research has shown us, some of these laws are grounded in very solid science:Murphy's Law of Buttered Bread: "A dropped piece of bread will always land butter side down." Scientific Analysis: The behavior of a piece of bread dropped from table height is fairly predictable. As it falls to the ground it is more likely than not to rotate on its axis; and the distance to the ground is not sufficient for the bread to rotate the full 360 degrees needed for it to land face up. So more often than not, it will land face down. Murphy's Law of Lines: "The line next to you will move more quickly than the one you're in." (Also works with a line of traffic.) Scientific Analysis: On average, all the lanes of traffic, or lines at a K-Mart, move at roughly the same rate. That means that if there's a checkout line on either side of you, there's a two in three chance that one of them will move faster than the one you're in. Murphy's Law of Socks: "If you lose a sock, it's always from a complete pair." Scientific Analysis: Start with a drawer containing 10 complete pairs of socks, for a total of 20 socks. Now lose one sock, creating one incomplete pair. The drawer now contains 19 socks, 18 of which belong to a complete pair. Now lose a second sock. If all of the remaining socks have the same odds of being lost, there's only 1 chance out of 18 that this lost sock is the mate of the first one that was lost. That means there's a 94.4% chance that it's from one of the complete pairs. Murphy's Law of Maps: "The place you're looking for on the map will be gathered at the most inconvenient place on the map, such as an edge, a corner, or near a fold." Scientific Analysis: If you measure out an inch or so from each edge of the map and from each fold, and then calculate the total area of these portions of the map, they'll account for more than half of the total area of the map. So if you pick a point at random, there's a better than 50% chance that it will be in an inconvenient-to-read part of the map. Zappa's Law and Other Facts of LifeHere are some other immutable laws of the universe to consider:
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The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John's All-Purpose Extra Strength Bathroom Reader. The 13th book in the series by the Bathroom Reader's Institute has 504-all new pages crammed with fun facts, including articles on the biggest movie bombs ever, the origin and unintended use of I.Q. test, and more. Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out! |
Oh godness.. a paradox!
The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum
Hanlon's Razer:
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity
Seems silly that the first run of the test would run at forces that high. Seems that a more logical approach would be to run the sled up to a lower speed & hit the brakes to ensure that all was working as it should. With a newly designed & previously untested set of sensors in place, that's how I would've done it anyway.
Then again, as they say, "hindsight is 20/20".
Murphy’s Law is why two-pronged electrical plugs are now designed with one prong slightly larger than the other - so they can be plugged in the proper way.
Not so. Electrical plugs are designed that way now to avoid the possibility of electrical shock from ungrounded appliances. On any appliance that operates on AC and has a two-pronged plug, one of the conductors attached to the plug is also attached to the frame of the appliance. Likewise, in the house wiring and the receptacle, one of the conductors is tied to ground (the wider of the two slots in a 110VAC receptacle in the US) and the other is tied to one of the 110VAC busses in the breaker box. If not for the difference in size of the prongs, the frame of the appliance could have 110VAC applied to it. The appliance would still work, but it could pose a danger to whomever is using it.
The danger is most notable in lamps and devices with standard light sockets on them; if the plug were inserted backwards, the 110VAC would be applied to the metal socket on the outside of the lamp that you'd touch to turn the thing on & off. When properly connected, the 110VAC is only applied to the center contact at the bottom of the socket.
Without the different sized prongs in the plug, the user would have no way of knowing which way to plug it in. That was the case in years past, but we've learned from our mistakes. I guess you could argue that Murphy's Law prompted the change, but it'd be a stretch.
As for the lost sock, check the inside front of your dryer, right behind the lint trap: the place you don't normally see that's just big enough to hide one sock.
In the end,we're just losers.
Not really a murphy candidate, but: in mechanical systems, eventually most everything becomes a whatchamacallit or a doohickey. This is especially true of simple, instantly recognizable things.