The Law of Conservation of Binder Clips
Finishing up my second rotation today, I decided that it was time to clean up my office and recycle some of the unsightly stacks of paper currently cluttering my desk. As I threw stuff away, I removed some binder clips from documents, and picked up other binder clips floating around my desk. As I collected them and put them back in their appropriate boxes, I saw that the boxes were still almost full. I was somewhat surprised, as I had noticed a few days ago that I was getting low and thought I would need to visit the supply room to restock my supply.
This prompted a realization in my mind: The world basically has a fixed supply of binder clips -- they only are passed from one person to another. There should be a scientific law that captures this phenomenon, similar to the Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy (also known as the First Law of Thermodynamics). fn1.
The Law of Conservation of Binder Clips would go something like this:
Binder clips can neither be created or destroyed, they are only transferred from one office to another.
Sure, it's not entirely true. Binder clips occasionally are taken out of circulation when they are on documents put into cold storage, or when they are thrown away. But for the most part, they just trade hands as people send documents to each other.
I am so brilliant that it hurts to be me!
1. The First Law of Thermodynamics states that "matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it only changes forms." Wikipeida has more information, for the intellectually curious members of the audience. (The more scientifically inclined readers may argue that the phrase "intellectually curious" in the preceding sentence is really just a synonym for "ignorant," as the truly intellectually curious would have learned about something as basic as the First Law of Thermodynamics long ago. But here at Black Red Yellow, we don't judge readers based on knowledge level -- we're accepting like that.)
This prompted a realization in my mind: The world basically has a fixed supply of binder clips -- they only are passed from one person to another. There should be a scientific law that captures this phenomenon, similar to the Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy (also known as the First Law of Thermodynamics). fn1.
The Law of Conservation of Binder Clips would go something like this:
Binder clips can neither be created or destroyed, they are only transferred from one office to another.
Sure, it's not entirely true. Binder clips occasionally are taken out of circulation when they are on documents put into cold storage, or when they are thrown away. But for the most part, they just trade hands as people send documents to each other.
I am so brilliant that it hurts to be me!
1. The First Law of Thermodynamics states that "matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it only changes forms." Wikipeida has more information, for the intellectually curious members of the audience. (The more scientifically inclined readers may argue that the phrase "intellectually curious" in the preceding sentence is really just a synonym for "ignorant," as the truly intellectually curious would have learned about something as basic as the First Law of Thermodynamics long ago. But here at Black Red Yellow, we don't judge readers based on knowledge level -- we're accepting like that.)
posted by N at 3:13 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home