Carl Sagan Worthy

New puzzler time!

Now, I don't want anyone to think that I'm ripping any puzzles off, because this one does bear a striking resemblance to the puzzler from last week!
But I'm sure that's fine. As my brother would say, not a single person on this fair planet, including our own mother, would ever listen to this show twice. Certainly not twice in a row!
When I called the house, she'd say, "Ray who?" She always liked Tom better!

Okay, the sort of new puzzler...

Some years ago. Crusty old mechanic. Beat up, worn down Buick. Comes in. The engine is flooded. This is probably ringing a bell for anyone who read this last week!
Anyway, the engine, it's flooded. I told the mechanic to look at the spark plugs.
He said he wanted to try something. And he took all the spark plug wires off the plugs. He left them halfway on. Instead of taking the wires all the way off, as I said, he left a distance between the ends of the spark plug in the metal part of the spark plug wire. So there was a big gap where there had been a good metal-to-metal connection, which conventional wisdom tells us you need to get electricity to flow from one place to another. For example, you wouldn't screw your light bulbs halfway into the socket.

So he wants to try this. He turns the key, and it starts right up. Amazing. And when that happened in the garage, there was a chorus of, "Oooooh. Amazing!"
This was roughly 100 years ago that this happened. Over the years, we have had many opportunities to verify that this technique absolutely works. So empirically, we have proven that this works. The question I asked last week was, is this possible? Is it possible that this technique actually works? And the answer was, yes.

But this week's question is, how is this possible?

What's going on here? I want the real technical explanation, please! You must have the real, scientific answer. We want the Carl Sagan worthy scientific answer to this week's puzzler.

Good luck!

Answer the Puzzler »

Remember last week's puzzler?

Foolish Medieval Remedies

It is time for a new puzzler! This is not one of those embarrassing puzzlers either, I'm happy to say. This is a good one!

There's a little bit of history woven into this one. Some years ago we had a mechanic that worked for us. Back when we were mere neophytes, back at the turn of the century... You know, way back in the late 80s.
And one day a car came in that had obviously been flooded. It was a cold winter day. And the owner of the car had tried to start it and the choke was stuck. And the thing was flooded. It was pretty obvious. We tried to start it and it made that wrrrrring sound because it was flooded.

We decided we were gonna take the plugs out, but my mechanic stopped me and said he wanted to try something first.
He was a great one for experimentation, this guy. He had always wanted to rebuild the transmission or two!
He took all the sparkplug wires off the plug. He removed them all and instead of taking the plugs out, he put all the plug wires back on but left a distance between the end of the spark plug. There was a distance of perhaps an inch between the end of the spark plug wire, the middle part of the wire, and the tip of the spark plug.

So in other words, the spark had to jump. It was as if the spark plug wires were about to fall off. He installed them in such a manner that they were about to fall off so that the spark could no longer make a smooth transition through a conductor from the wire to the plug. It now has to jump an inch across.
So instead of having what everyone would say is a good connection. You had what electricians would call a lousy connection.
So he did that to all eight plugs.

He does that and he gets in the car and turns the key, and guess what? It starts right up. It starts right up!

And the question is, do you believe this?
The mechanic makes a purposely bad connection. And BINGO BINGO the car starts right up.

Are these old wives tales or are these foolish medieval Alchemist remedies or is there some basic physics involved here?