标签: smoke

I have a story I've been meaning to tell. When I returned home the evening before Thanksgiving, I discovered my son, Joseph, looking shell shocked. His hair was standing on end. He was panting and covered in sweat, and he gave the impression of having finished a marathon. The closest thing I can think of to give you an idea of what I'm talking about is Beaker from The Muppet Show having a bad day.   For some reason, the first thing that popped into my mind was the expression "Fire in the hole," which is commonly used to alert people that a controlled detonation is about to take place. The first cannons were fired by applying a flaming torch to a small hole packed with gunpowder. "Fire in the hole" was both a command to the man wielding the torch and a warning to anyone in the vicinity. Once Joseph had quieted down and caught his breath, he explained what had happened. The day before, my wife (Gina the Gorgeous) had mentioned that we needed to clean the oven in anticipation of her preparing our Thanksgiving repast. Since I had been broiling quite a few steaks and burgers recently, I told her she should wait for me to give it a good wipe down to remove any grease before she ran the oven's self-cleaning cycle. Did she listen to me? Ha. Why is it that no one ever listens to what I have to say? It's like casting pearls of wisdom before... creatures that don't appreciate such things. The following afternoon, while I was still at work, Gina initiated the oven's self-cleaning function and then merrily sailed out of the door on her way to the grocery store after instructing Joseph to "keep an eye on things." According to Joseph, it wasn't long before thick, black smoke started pouring out of the oven. Unfortunately, he didn't have a clue how to terminate the cycle. First, he opened the front and back doors to get a breeze blowing through the house... only to discover that it was a still and windless day. While Joseph was contemplating his next move, the smoke detector in the hallway connecting the kitchen to the garage started to sound the alarm. Being well acquainted with the ramifications of his mother's exuberant cooking techniques, Joseph immediately dragged a stool under the detector, mounted the stool, and started fanning the detector with a magazine. As soon as that detector had ceased its warbling, the one in the corridor at the other side of the family room took over. Joseph dragged his stool across the house and started fanning that little rascal. Then the detector in the master bedroom took up the call, quickly followed by the detector in Joseph's bedroom. One thing you can say about our house is that it is in no way underequipped on the smoke detector front. To cut a long story short, smoke kept on pouring out of the oven, and Joseph spent much of the next hour or so fanning one detector into submission, only to have the next one grasp the metaphorical baton and run with it. It was as if Joseph had invented a novel version of Whac-A-Mole. Suffice it to say that Joseph is no longer a fan of self-cleaning ovens.  

You're aware what it's like when you connect a power supply to your system with the incorrect polarity – or maybe you connect the power supply the right way round, but you've inadvertently soldered the pins of some component to the wrong power plane(s) – and "poof" – a small cloud of pungent-smelling smoke appears. Many people think that this is "game over" and the component in question can no longer function. What you may not realise is that it was only the concentrated smoke that was loaded into the component under extreme pressure during the manufacturing process that made it work in the first place. In the not-so-distant past, almost any old smoke would do. More recently, we've seen the introduction of solid crystalline smoke because of its small feature size... that popping sound you hear when you apply the incorrect potential to the component is the rapid phase change from solid crystal to gas (the gaseous form is the one with which we are most familiar). Furthermore, the rumour on the street is that, for next-generation silicon chips implemented at the 20nm process node and below, they are going to have to dispense with even the solid crystalline smoke – my contacts tell me that they're just going to fill the space with individual Bucky-balls and hope for the best. As one engineer told me: "It's amazing how much black smoke they can fit into even a small FPGA these days, and once it's out there is no getting it back in again – even if you catch it all in a jam jar." Well, I can certainly understand where he's coming from, but that's because he's not acquainted with the Electrical Smoke Re-concentrator from those clever folks at AEROstich.com. When you read the product description on the AEROstich.com website, I think you will agree that this little scamp looks like a "must have" for every workshop, and it's a bargain at the price!