I know this is going to sound crazy, but my Slinky (that’s the Original Slinky Walking Spring Toy) has the power to turn on, turn off, and change channels on our TV set! Shortly after receiving the Slinky as a birthday gift, I was watching TV and absentmindedly tumbling the Slinky back and forth in my hands. The TV went off, then came back on a minute or two later. At first I figured our TV was on the blink. But when the TV switched itself on the next time I played with the Slinky the truth dawned. Since then, all our friends and visitors have experienced firsthand the power of Slinky. We can turn the TV off and on and change channels. My brother was even able to adjust the volume. There is no physical contact between the Slinky and the TV. It works best from a chair about six feet from the set. Can you explain this? –Karen Schrage, Chicago
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
It’s questions like this that give me the strength to go on. To be sure, I had heard of such things before. But most of the letters were along the lines of the following: “How come when you hold a chopstick in your teeth and pluck it, the TV screen shimmies? Nothing else shimmies.” Clearly a case of heavy-metal poisoning, although whether from cadmium or Aerosmith is hard to say. Karen’s letter, however, was comparatively rational. We called to check one vital detail: did the set have an ordinary remote control? Karen didn’t know, but the set was pretty old (it had come with the apartment), and it might have had one once.
How do they make helium? Think about it. It’s an inert gas that doesn’t combine with anything else, so there can’t be helium mines filled with helium ore. The only place I’ve ever heard of where you can find a lot of helium is the sun, where it’s created by fusion. Fusion is prohibitively expensive on earth, yet somehow commercial helium is cheap enough that they can fill toy balloons with it. What’s the deal? –Bob Y., Evanston, Illinois
