The Frightening Differential
It is time for the puzzler. This is a perplexing puzzler. Very perplexing.
And I wanna say, right off the bat, do not try this at home! This is serious, this puzzler. So, do not try this one at home.
Okay, here goes. Two of my neighbors collaborated on this one. They will remain nameless. Otherwise, I might have to pay them... Gotta call them something though so that we will make up names for them. Let's call them Goober and Gomer. Okay, here we go.
Goober has a noise in his old car. It's a big old American car, rear wheel drive, you know, something like a 1980 Chevy or something.
And he has a noise in the back that he thinks is an axle bearing. He hears the noise at about 50 or 60 miles an hour or so, and he would like to be able to reproduce the noise with the car up in the air, so he can hear it. It sounds like a growling kind of noise. Sounds like an axel bearing, but he can't tell which side it's coming from. So, Gomer says, "I know how we can do this. We don't have to jack up the whole back end of the car, we can jack up one wheel at a time."
Because all they have is a bumper jack. So they jack up one back wheel with the other wheel sitting on the ground. They start the thing up and they put it in gear. And in fact, one wheel will turn. The car won't drive itself off the jack. This is exactly the same thing that's happening if that wheel were on ice. It would just spin and so now, you're making believe it's ice, but it's on air. That's why the wheel that's always on the ice is the one that turns and the one on dry pavement doesn't because that's the way the differential works.
The differential makes sure that the wheel with the most traction is the one that doesn't turn. So he says, "Just bring it up to 50, Gomer. I'm gonna put my ear over here." Gomer's in the car and Goober is outside. He brings it up to 50. So you can actually see this when you do this. And if he had both wheels off the ground, both wheels would be spinning because they both have the same amount of traction or lack thereof. And they would both be turning but with one wheel on the ground, just one wheel is turning.
The speedometer says 50. And then he says, "I can't hear anything. Bring it up to 60." He says, "I still can't hear it. I know it's here. Let's let it down and check the other side."
So they let it down and jack up the other side. He says, "Okay. Bring it up to 60. Bring up the 70! I can't hear it. I know the noises back here someplace. I can't hear it."
And all of a sudden, something incredible happens.
What is it that happens? This is the puzzler. Something incredible and frightening happens. I'll give you a hint. Goober's dog ran away, never to be seen again.
We should mention again, do not try this at home! Don't try this at home because this is serious business.
If you want something incredibly frightening to happen to you, let it not be this, okay? Do not do this at home, because this really can happen.
Theoretical puzzler guesses only, please!
