4 ms·
Its opposite is the "technician effect", whereby your malfunctioning system always works when the technician (who is going to fix it) is present. Incidentally,
by femto 10y ago
Its opposite is the "technician effect", whereby your malfunctioning system always works when the technician (who is going to fix it) is present.
Incidentally, the antidote to the Pauli Effect is to tape a raw sausage to your circuit. Everyone knows that your circuit always works when you put your finger on it, and the sausage emulates your finger. (There is actually some truth to this joke, as the sausage/finger provides a little parasitic capacitance, which can make an unstable RF circuit become stable.)
- hibbelig 10y agoIt's magic! http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/magic-story.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/magic-story.html
- martin-adams 10y agoAnd of course there are the demo fairies, who magically make your fully working prototype stop working only when presented in front of an audience.
- david-given 10y agoHave you heard of quantum bogodynamics? The theory is that there's an elemental particle, the bogon. When this is absorbed by a piece of equipment, it frequently malfunctions. Good engineers, over time, become bogon sinks, so that when there's an engineer around the bogon absorption rate of the equipment they're working on drops. Meanwhile, managers tend to become bogon _emitters_. So, give a device to them and it instantly fails. Pauli, here, sounds like he was a massive bogon source. This handily explains the effect where the device will reliably fail but when an engineer shows up to look at it, it works fine. It also explains why demos are so flaky: all those people watching the demo are emitting a massive bogon flux...
- calgoo 10y agoI read the first line as: "Have you heard of quantum Bogeyman" Going to get a second cup of coffee now...
- Bromskloss 10y ago"Our lord and saviour."
- Zardoz84 10y agoThe "Demo effect"
- fleitz 10y agoAlso known as 'the knack' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60P1xG32Feo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60P1xG32Feo
- cardiffspaceman 10y agoMy boss used to call that a peoplefarad capacitor.
- jeffwass 10y agoReminds me of the good ol' days, where televisions had rabbit-ears antennae. Sometimes on a channel with bad reception, just touching the antenna to adjust would improve the signal due to the human body acting as a weakly-coupled extension of the antenna. And of course after letting go the signal would degrade again. Made it hard to optimally tune the station sometimes.
- Ericson2314 10y agoWow, I remember that with radios too. Never new why until now.