U4. Murphy’s Law

Дата публикации: May 08, 2014 11:34:44 AM

If you were to spread some jam on a piece of bread and then accidentally drop it. Murphy's Law dictates that it would fall, annoyingly, on the side coated with jam. Or if you were driving hastily to reach an important date Murphy's Law dictates that your car, for the first time in years, would, of course, break down.

In short, if anything can go wrong it will, or as Edward A. Murphy first said in 1949: 'If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those can result in catastrophe, then someone will do it’. This sad truth was the basic premise of Murphy's Law.

Edward Murphy was an engineer with the US Air Force. He coined the term during a project to test the tolerance of human beings to ejection from the latest jet aircraft. The project involved shooting a rocket-sled across the base, accelerating volunteer passengers to speeds in excess of 630 miles per hour, which then stopped in 1.4 seconds. For one of the experiments, sixteen sensors had to be glued to the volunteer's body. There were two ways these could be attached and, of course, each tended to get stuck on the wrong way round.

This is what led Edward Murphy to pronounce the 'law'. Shortly afterwards, at a press conference, the team's good safety record was put down to a firm belief in Murphy's Law and to the necessity of checking everything twice and twice again to circumvent it.

Moreover, the project manager kept a list of 'laws' that he deemed vital to the success of future experiments, lie added the new Murphy's Law. thus making it integral to the aviation industry. Other manufacturing industries picked up on the useful new term and soon it was being quoted in newspapers and magazines and. in 1958. was included in Webster's Dictionary.

So. we should remember that Murphy's Law is not just a throwaway comment to explain why bread would fall jam-side down. It is an integral part of a wide spectrum of technical cultures and only by employing Murphy's Law and acting upon it can engineers be almost certain that nothing will go wrong. In some circles this principle is known as 'defensive design'.

You do not. for example, make a two-pin plug symmetrical then label it This way up'. If it matters which way it is plugged in. you make it asymmetrical in shape. This is not to say that the law has no use away from manufacturing industries or that it is irrelevant to everyday life.

Today, Murphy's Law is generally looked upon as being less associated with precise and sensible manufacturing techniques and more to the stresses of our modern life and its new-fangled technology. Take the alarm clock - is it not the case that whenever you have something important to do the next morning, the alarm will not go off? Or escalators - can it be that the first dne you find is always going the wrong way?

There is another name for such examples - 'Sod's Law'. This title is derived from the fact that if something catastrophic is likely to go wrong, it will go wrong for the poor soul who needs it least. There are countless other examples, among them: Lotto Law, in which you have been playing the same numbers since draw number one. You fancy a change, and then your original numbers are drawn. Plus, Tots' Law. which states that if you need to carry a child, he or she will want to walk. It follows that if you need a child to walk, he or she will want to be carried.

In reality, Murphy's Law has been around long before humans walked the planet. You can imagine a wounded dinosaur making his way home and being confronted by two different and unknown routes. One leads to home and safety, the other to an ambush -and we all know which one he would take.

But despite this long pedigree, there is no scientific evidence to support Murphy's Law itself - it's all down to perception. The alarm clock that failed to go off when you needed it most has probably been ultra-reliable for many years. The fact is that you only register the occasions that cause problems and not the dozens of times your day starts smoothly.

However, there is a scientific application in that basic premise, 'If something can go wrong, it will.' By working on this basis, scientists try to eliminate any possibility of disaster or failure, rather than trust probability.

But while it is possible that Edward Murphy's announcement has saved a lot of lives, the sad fact is that he was killed by his own law. One evening Murphy's car ran out of petrol. He hitch-hiked to a petrol station, correctly facing the oncoming traffic, but was struck from behind by a British tourist who was driving on the wrong side of the road.

Questions:

1. If you were to spread some jam on a piece of bread and then accidentally drop it. Murphy's Law dictates that it would fall, annoyingly, on the side coated with jam. Если бы вы намазали джемом кусок хлеба и затем случайно уронили, закон Мерфи гласит, что он бы непременно упал намазанной стороной вниз. Условное 2 типа. Were - множественное число to be в условных 2 типа.

2. Edward Murphy was an engineer with the US Air Force. He worked with the US Air Force.