We have a small chipmunk to thank
for the three-hour power interruption on campus on Sunday night.
While generators restored power
throughout most of campus, the resulting “brownout” caused failures in a number
of small motors and other electrical components. Students were evacuated from
Fox for about 90 minutes while officials traced the cause of smoke that resulted
from a failed generator.
The small rodent somehow entered
an enclosure of electrical gear, either while it was being maintained or
through a conduit, only to discover that electricity takes the path of least
resistance. The animal did not survive.
Philip Kosky, the Distinguished GE
Research Professor of Engineering, has a clever way with lecture titles. Last
year, he gave a talk on “Mad Cow” disease titled, “Conformational Protein
Disease: Rendering a Verdict – It Ain't All Bull!” (It was a serious talk on
estimating the probable number of human victims who will get the disease in the
U.K. in the
next 25 years.) And for an internal talk on forming diamonds from natural gas,
he used the title, “Say It With Sewage.” (A nod to a Time magazine headline about a fellow researcher who experimented
in the field.) “If only the content were up to the standard of the titles,”
Kosky laments.