Science Forum

Pong · Posted: Sat Jan 23, 2010 12:48 pm Post subject:

I think engineers of all people may have felt this:

The feeling of discomfort when a flowerpot is placed upon a shelf, and one senses uneven grit beneath the pot. A compulsive feeling that perhaps by gently shifting the pot it would seat better. That's one obvious example. More insidiously, I've felt this even with a pencil on a desk - it's like I sometimes want to give the pencil a nudge to align the ..um, nap... of its molecules where they touch the desk surface. On the plus side I'm not the sort who'd strip a screw head, because I feel weakness in the metal before that would happen.

I'm curious to learn how others extend empathy to material things. Does it sometimes go too far?
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A pong by any other name is still a pong. -williampinn