Corollaries to Murphy's Law

[682bear]

Back when I was in the gunsmithing business, I did all my assembly/ disassembly work in a 9x9 room, so if I turned loose a spring loaded plunger or something similar, I wouldn't have to search far to find it.

One day, I let loose a tiny plunger and spring, and they both bounced off my eyeglasses and disappeared. I spent a couple of hours moving everything in the room, sweeping the floor, etc... and didn't find either one...

I finally gave up and decided I would have to order new parts. At that point I went upstairs and started getting ready to take a shower. When I took my shirt off, I heard something hit the floor...

Both pieces had went in my shirt pocket...

-Bear

 

[RJSakowski]

I have spent far too much time on my hands and knees with a flashlight looking for errant parts.

 

[MrWhoopee]

While adding a water filter to my Heat Pump's Humidifier I developed several additions to Murphy's Law (https://www.thoughtco.com/murphys-laws-explain-unfathomable-truths-2832861), related to the handling of small parts:

1) If (when?) a part is dropped, it will bounce/roll further than seems physically possible.

2) If dropped inside, the part will travel until it is under an immovable object; if outside, the part will end up in a deep, narrow hole or in tall grass.

3) The part will be precisely 1/2" ± 1/8" further away than can be reached, regardless of the tools at hand.

I've spent far too much time re-familiarizing myself with these corollaries recently. In particular I lost my only 6-32 x 1/8 set-screw.

Allow me to add:

4. If the part is magnetic, the search area will be covered with thousands of similarly magnetic decoys.

 

[Mitch Alsup]

I have spent far too much time on my hands and knees with a flashlight looking for errant parts.

I have spent way tooo much times sweeping the shop floor and looking through the waste to find a part that easily hides in swarf.

 

[tq60]

Back in the day when we worked un the screen room fixing portable radios and pagers I just got a drawer set with maybe 20 something drawers and ordered the screws and other tiny parts that would vanish.

Drop one, replace it.

Sent from my SM-G781V using Tapatalk

 

[RJSakowski]

I have spent way tooo much times sweeping the shop floor and looking through the waste to find a part that easily hides in swarf.

Worse yet when you are doing a repair in the field and that special bolt falls in the grass. More than once, I have carefilly but fruitlessly torn away all the grass hoping to find it.

 

[Janderso]

Add to this;
4. If a part that is dropped has multiple directions in which to bounce, it will bounce in the direction where it is least easy to detect its presence.

Remember the Damascus incident?
Guy drops a socket wrench, it hits the deck and bounces into a Titan ICBM.
It could have been much worse.

 

[Provincial]

When I started working on automobiles as a teenager, I discovered that:

The dropped part goes to the geometric center of the vehicle.

First Corollary:

Except when there is a less accessible location, in which case it ends up there.