Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Polette,
Speaker 1: and I am the tech editor here at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot Com. Sitting across from me as usual as
Speaker 1: senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Hey there, all right, I'm I
Speaker 1: feel amped up. Yeah, I feel I'm getting a real
Speaker 1: charge on today's Let's not do this, We've done it
Speaker 1: so many other times before. Let's just start off with
Speaker 1: a little a listener mail. This listener mail comes from Eric,
Speaker 1: who says, hey, guys, I really enjoyed the podcast and
Speaker 1: was wondering if you had ever thought about talking about
Speaker 1: smart meters. Right now in Dallas, it is all over
Speaker 1: the news about how some people are getting ripped off
Speaker 1: by these meters. How do they differ from the old
Speaker 1: fashioned analog power meter, or, as I lovingly think of them,
Speaker 1: the spinny power meters. They seem easier to read and
Speaker 1: they talk back to the power company with no need
Speaker 1: for a meter reader. With modern day technology, how can
Speaker 1: this be a bad thing? I would love to hear
Speaker 1: about this either on the blog or a podcast in
Speaker 1: the near future. Thanks Eric, Well, Eric, we thought we
Speaker 1: talked a bit about smart meters and the smart grid. Yes, indeed,
Speaker 1: because as it turns out, right now, our power grid
Speaker 1: in the United States is pretty stupid. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: it is inanimate and all that. But what we're talking
Speaker 1: about when we talk about the smart grid is, um,
Speaker 1: a very centralized system of electricity. Now, of course, most
Speaker 1: of the country is wired into a very um how
Speaker 1: should I put this over burdened is putting it delicately? Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the power grid right now, the way power power generation
Speaker 1: and transmission works is you've got power generators throughout the
Speaker 1: United States, UM, about nine two undered electric generating units,
Speaker 1: and those are producing more than a million megawatts and
Speaker 1: it's and they have more than three hundred thousand miles
Speaker 1: of transmission lines. Yes, Jonathan is quoting some statistics from
Speaker 1: the United States Department of Energy. Yes, so apparently you
Speaker 1: read the same the same uh guide book. Yes, there's
Speaker 1: a really uh I really like that guide book. Actually
Speaker 1: it's very easy to understand, UM, and what it's crammed
Speaker 1: full of some real really eye opening statistics. UM. Little
Speaker 1: things like since UH peak demand growth has exceeded transmission
Speaker 1: growth by nearly per year. So what that means is
Speaker 1: that the demand for energy is growing at a much
Speaker 1: faster rate than the rate that we're adding capacity in
Speaker 1: the in the in the transmission lines. Now, that does
Speaker 1: not mean that demand exceeds capacity yet, it just means
Speaker 1: that the growth is completely out of whack. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the thing is with the current grid the way it is,
Speaker 1: and the reason why you should be concerned and about
Speaker 1: this is um everything is wired into the few UH
Speaker 1: centralized power generating facilities. So the problem is once something
Speaker 1: goes down, it takes down a lot of the grid
Speaker 1: with it. We've we've seen that happen several times in
Speaker 1: the past few years. It's in different parts because what
Speaker 1: you've got like a when you think about you've got
Speaker 1: a power generator that is sending power to essentially a
Speaker 1: distribution center, which then sends it out to all the consumers.
Speaker 1: And by consumers we mean people who are you know,
Speaker 1: your house, your job, all the places you go to.
Speaker 1: Those are all the consumers for the power companies. So yeah,
Speaker 1: if you have a power generator go down, then that
Speaker 1: affects everyone further down that chain. Now, the real problem
Speaker 1: with the power grid as it stands now is it's
Speaker 1: not terribly flexible and it's not intelligent in the sense
Speaker 1: that it can't detect a problem on its own if
Speaker 1: something if something goes wrong, people have to notice it
Speaker 1: and report it in order for the power companies to react. Now, granted,
Speaker 1: if it's a power generator that goes down, you can
Speaker 1: pretty much bet the power company knows about it, because
Speaker 1: they're gonna be people at that facility screaming and panicking
Speaker 1: or at least making very frantic phone calls to other
Speaker 1: power generators to try and do a load balance so
Speaker 1: that consumers are not without power for too long while
Speaker 1: they try and get the generator backup online. But we're
Speaker 1: pretty reliant on electricity at this point. I don't think
Speaker 1: that kind of thing goes uh unnoticed for very long. Right.
Speaker 1: But if let's say that there is a major power
Speaker 1: outage in part of your town due to a tree
Speaker 1: falling across some power lines, the power company does not
Speaker 1: know that you are no longer receiving power at that point.
Speaker 1: They can't tell because there's no feedback system there. With
Speaker 1: the basic power grid structure, a smart grid would have
Speaker 1: a feedback system where every single consumer would have a
Speaker 1: smart meter um that not only was easier to read
Speaker 1: and could tell you how much you are consuming at
Speaker 1: any particular time, but would send this information directly back
Speaker 1: to the power company. Because right now, the power companies
Speaker 1: have to for for the most of the country anyway,
Speaker 1: the power companies have to rely on the old method
Speaker 1: of sending a meter reader out to your house to
Speaker 1: actually physically walk up to the meter, read what it says,
Speaker 1: write it down, and then go back to the power company. Yeah,
Speaker 1: spinny powers that Eric was referring to write. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: they're reading what it says on there and then making
Speaker 1: note of it. And that's what your bill is based
Speaker 1: off of these these uh, regular meter reads. But with
Speaker 1: a smart meter, it's constantly feeding the information back to
Speaker 1: the company. UM. Now, I did look into the controversy
Speaker 1: they talked about the Dallas controversy. Yes, this is what
Speaker 1: the company called Encore, right, And in this case, what's
Speaker 1: happening is that they consumers in Dallas are claiming that
Speaker 1: their their electricity bills are higher than they should be,
Speaker 1: and that they suspect that these new smart meters that
Speaker 1: have just recently been installed in their homes are in fact,
Speaker 1: uh giving incorrect readings. They're not they're not calibrated properly,
Speaker 1: and that if they had been using the old meters,
Speaker 1: their bill would have been lower because either the old
Speaker 1: meters were more accurate or something along those lines. Now,
Speaker 1: the power company's response is that they want to run
Speaker 1: tests to make sure that the meters are in fact,
Speaker 1: uh not reading as they should be. But the other
Speaker 1: factor in this equation is that Dallas had a particularly
Speaker 1: cold winter and as as a result, a lot of
Speaker 1: people were using more electricity in order to heat their homes.
Speaker 1: So it may be that the bills were hired not
Speaker 1: because the meter was incorrect, but because they legitimately used
Speaker 1: more electricity. Well, obviously a lot of people are concerned
Speaker 1: about it because from what I've read, only generally what
Speaker 1: happens is only about four tests to check out uh
Speaker 1: what are considered poorly functioning meters happen in uh And
Speaker 1: you know, a given month, you know, I'll have to uncle,
Speaker 1: I'll have to send somebody out to check on a
Speaker 1: meter based on a person's complaint, and uh. But in
Speaker 1: January and February of the months immediately preceding the one
Speaker 1: in which we are recording this podcast. Uh, it's spiked
Speaker 1: to four thousand per month, so it is you know,
Speaker 1: now a thousand or what no, I mean a thousand percent.
Speaker 1: And it got to the point where, uh, the the
Speaker 1: city government actually stated that, uh, that they would no
Speaker 1: longer they would waive the twenty five dollar fee that
Speaker 1: it usually takes to have to send someone out and
Speaker 1: run a test on the meter because so many people
Speaker 1: had complained. They want to seem responsive, so uh so
Speaker 1: that that fee has been waved from this point on,
Speaker 1: and anyone who had someone come out and test the
Speaker 1: meter recently is actually do a refund if they did
Speaker 1: pay that twenty five dollar fee. Well, normally they get
Speaker 1: one free reading from Encore, but the every public a
Speaker 1: couple of years though every hold on UM every four years,
Speaker 1: they get one free test. But the Dallas Public Utility
Speaker 1: Commission told Encore it had to waive the fee or
Speaker 1: refund the fee UM based on whether or not people
Speaker 1: were having continued problems because say, uh, say you had
Speaker 1: just had a complaint about your power meter, they sent
Speaker 1: somebody out there, that's your free visit. But say the
Speaker 1: new meter doesn't seem to be functioning any better, and
Speaker 1: you have somebody else come out and test it. Well,
Speaker 1: they're saying that, you know, based on the what's going
Speaker 1: on right now, they want away if the twenty five
Speaker 1: fee because they want to make sure that the smart
Speaker 1: meters are working correctly, and they're responding to complaints. So
Speaker 1: it's it's because people are complaining over and over again
Speaker 1: that the smart meters are not doing what they're supposed
Speaker 1: to do right now. Whether the smart meters are actually malfunctioning,
Speaker 1: that's a totally different matter. It may just be like
Speaker 1: we said that people are using more electricity than they
Speaker 1: realize and that it's just that the power company has
Speaker 1: an accurate measure on it. We just don't know the
Speaker 1: whole story yet. But I have a theory. What's that
Speaker 1: to um that there's just a theory. It's not based
Speaker 1: on anything other than just what came to mind. UM.
Speaker 1: I wonder if human error factors into it. Also, people
Speaker 1: who come out to read the meter and they read it, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, one way, and then suddenly the smart meter
Speaker 1: is reading at at an accurate level and they're going,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, or maybe they report differently too, I
Speaker 1: wondered that it could even be that that power companies
Speaker 1: only send meter readers out on a pretty rare basis,
Speaker 1: and that they estimate how much a monthly fee is
Speaker 1: based upon your previous usage, which means and which they
Speaker 1: can adjust whenever they do a future reading, like they'll
Speaker 1: they may do one reading every three months instead of
Speaker 1: every month, and then so in the months in between readings,
Speaker 1: they'll make an estimate and then uh, if the estimate
Speaker 1: it was too high, then when the metiator reads the
Speaker 1: the meter and it's it's lower than they had projected,
Speaker 1: they can adjust the bill lowers to to factor that in,
Speaker 1: or vice versa if the people use more energy than
Speaker 1: was projected. UM. The smart meters, though, I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about why they are and generally why they're kind
Speaker 1: of a cool idea. Well, of course, it's easy to
Speaker 1: say it's nice that they don't have to send somebody
Speaker 1: out to your house every time they need to do
Speaker 1: a check up and see how much electricity it used. UM.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that that I think is
Speaker 1: really cool about that too is that it gives the
Speaker 1: customers some insight into exactly how much electricity they're using,
Speaker 1: which is not the case with the Spinney power meters, right. Yeah, UM,
Speaker 1: most of us have no idea how much electricity we
Speaker 1: are using at any given time. Uh doesn't mean we
Speaker 1: we happen to know that if we're running a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff, like if the air conditioning is going on
Speaker 1: full blast and we've got the dishwasher going and the
Speaker 1: dryer out and you know, the laundry room is going
Speaker 1: at the same time, we know we're consuming a lot
Speaker 1: of power, but but we don't have any way of
Speaker 1: quantifying that. It just we just know, but we don't
Speaker 1: know like details. So it was really kind of meaningless. Yeah. Actually, UM,
Speaker 1: A couple of companies that we talked about quite a
Speaker 1: lot have created initiatives to help people take advantage of that,
Speaker 1: like Microsoft with its Home I just you know, saw
Speaker 1: the name again. When I saw the name, it triggered
Speaker 1: the fact that it's upon h O h M. I
Speaker 1: knew it had to have been something like that. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the and Google power Meter, which actually you can
Speaker 1: sign up for the service and uh keep track of
Speaker 1: what's going on with your house. Course it also um
Speaker 1: probably will enable them to sell ads to you, I
Speaker 1: don't know, and normal operation and you might be surprised
Speaker 1: to find out how much electricity you're consuming. But as
Speaker 1: we get more sophisticated with our technology, the technology also
Speaker 1: tends to to consume more electricity. Now, things like energy
Speaker 1: Star appliances and devices, those consume less electricity than their counterparts,
Speaker 1: but they they're still pretty power hungry. So if you've
Speaker 1: got things like a you know, a lot of like television's, computers,
Speaker 1: video game consoles, air conditioner appliances, close clothes dryer, there
Speaker 1: are no energy Star certified closed drying except for except
Speaker 1: for the clothes, yes, exactly, hanging out in the backyard.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you jumped in there because my brain
Speaker 1: bind out of me the thing where you think stuff
Speaker 1: and the pins and I don't know because I don't
Speaker 1: dry my clothes that way. I just wear them wet.
Speaker 1: Uh they no, the the that's not that's not entirely
Speaker 1: true now the uh so the other aspect of the
Speaker 1: smart meters of course. So yeah, you know how much
Speaker 1: electricity you are are using at any given time. Now,
Speaker 1: why is that important? Well, it's because electricity does not
Speaker 1: always cost the same amount throughout the day, that's right,
Speaker 1: And it depends on on the time of year two.
Speaker 1: Because pete usage times fluctuate based on a lot of
Speaker 1: different factors is and and the reason that peak usage
Speaker 1: rates go up from what I understand is because UH
Speaker 1: sometimes when you have your local grid and the peak
Speaker 1: usage goes over what the peak UHAT or peak generation
Speaker 1: ability is of the local station, then they're going to
Speaker 1: have to import energy from someone else, and that costs more.
Speaker 1: So they're going to have to charge you more to
Speaker 1: cover that cost. So you want to keep your peak
Speaker 1: usage down. And so having the ability to learn from
Speaker 1: your smart meter and and what your household energy usages
Speaker 1: will give you an idea of what the best time
Speaker 1: to you know, wash and dry closes for example. Right,
Speaker 1: you might notice that when you look at the meter,
Speaker 1: like a good meter would have a readoubt that you
Speaker 1: could easily see as a consumer and that you could
Speaker 1: easily interpret. So not only would you know how much
Speaker 1: energy you were consuming, but you would know the price
Speaker 1: of that energy at that time. And power companies usually
Speaker 1: release the price of what the power is going to
Speaker 1: be for the falling day, so you can see the
Speaker 1: day before what the what it's going to fall out.
Speaker 1: And then as far as the price, UH variation goes
Speaker 1: and you can play in your day accordingly. And so
Speaker 1: if you see that at nine pm the price hits
Speaker 1: nice low, then you know, well that's when I'm gonna
Speaker 1: run the washing machine or the dryer or whatever. Um.
Speaker 1: And then if it's really really high at two pm,
Speaker 1: you might think, well, I'm gonna try and avoid running
Speaker 1: as much as i can. Uh. Now, the peak times
Speaker 1: throughout the year tend to be things like the deep
Speaker 1: winter and the height of summer, because that's usually when
Speaker 1: we're either running the heat at full blast or the
Speaker 1: air conditioner at full blast um. And those are very
Speaker 1: power hungry applications. So with again, with the smart meter,
Speaker 1: you can keep an eye on how much you're using
Speaker 1: and when is the best time to use it. Um.
Speaker 1: There's one other element of smart meters that is very
Speaker 1: important and smart grid as well, which is that it
Speaker 1: reports back as we said to the power company, Well,
Speaker 1: it doesn't just report back the at you know, how
Speaker 1: much energy you're using. If that connection is somehow damaged,
Speaker 1: like like our our example of a tree falling on
Speaker 1: some power lines, the power company will see that the
Speaker 1: services interrupted. They don't have to wait for a phone call. Uh.
Speaker 1: They'll see that the connection no longer works and they
Speaker 1: can either try and route power around that problem so
Speaker 1: that the consumers are only affected for a brief period,
Speaker 1: or if that's not possible, they can just immediately send
Speaker 1: out an engineer to go and fix the break and
Speaker 1: the power line UH without having to wait first for
Speaker 1: a phone call alert them to the issue. Which is
Speaker 1: one of the most important parts about the smart red UH.
Speaker 1: It's much information travels much faster because it's it's more
Speaker 1: of a aware system in a way, instead of it
Speaker 1: just being you know, you're sending the power out and
Speaker 1: that's and you have to wait to hear anything. There's
Speaker 1: a constant two way communication going on. Another advantage of
Speaker 1: having a smart meter is if you are generating power
Speaker 1: on your own, say if you have some solar panels
Speaker 1: attached to your home, or if you've attached your Jack
Speaker 1: restal terriers to a power generating treadmill. I don't even
Speaker 1: want to know, I can power three neighborhoods. Well, I
Speaker 1: imagine so with Jack Russells. But anyhow, Yes, if you
Speaker 1: are generating power in some fashion and adding back to
Speaker 1: the grid, then the smart meter will be able to
Speaker 1: convey that information back as well, So you will, and
Speaker 1: in most circumstances, as far as I know, the energy
Speaker 1: company will pay you. Yeah. If you are a generate
Speaker 1: more power than you use, you can essentially sell that
Speaker 1: money back to the grid, so the energy back to
Speaker 1: the grid. So yes, thank you. No, no, you wouldn't
Speaker 1: sell the money. That'd be fun. I'll give you five
Speaker 1: bucks for that ten dollar bill. Uh, you got a deal. Um.
Speaker 1: Clearly this shows why I'm not a millionaire. UM. But
Speaker 1: you can also you and depending on the on the
Speaker 1: kind of meter you're running, it also may be able
Speaker 1: to measure uh, natural gas or water usage as well.
Speaker 1: And that's uh, you know that's sort of smart grid
Speaker 1: useful because um, in some cases, since the smart grid
Speaker 1: is decentralized rather than centralized like the current grid. UM,
Speaker 1: then you know there might be something in your neighborhood
Speaker 1: like a a small hydroelectric plant or you know, you know,
Speaker 1: wind energy, or a hybrid vehicle that could actually act
Speaker 1: as a tiny generator. I'm not joking either. You can
Speaker 1: sell extra energy back. UM. This this leads me to
Speaker 1: one other or two actually two other points, one of
Speaker 1: which is when you're talking about decentralization, that's an important
Speaker 1: aspect of security as well. With a centralized power system,
Speaker 1: it also means that besides the fact that you have uh,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of a weak power system, it means
Speaker 1: that you also have a very tempting target. Yes, it
Speaker 1: means that a terrorist, for example, might target a power
Speaker 1: generator be knowing that that's going to affect a very
Speaker 1: wide area. And of course losing your power means that
Speaker 1: you also lose the ability to communicate in large part,
Speaker 1: and that can make things even worse. You know, it
Speaker 1: just causes more panic, which, as we all know terrorism,
Speaker 1: that's kind of the point. Um. So decentralizing your power
Speaker 1: generation means that you have you create, you create the
Speaker 1: opportunity to well create the opportunity is a bad way
Speaker 1: of putting it. You eliminate targets because now even if
Speaker 1: you were to somehow take out one target, because you've decentralized,
Speaker 1: the rest of the system can try and pick up
Speaker 1: the slack until it can be fixed. So it makes
Speaker 1: it makes those kind of attacks less effective. We are
Speaker 1: not anywhere close to having a smart grid right now now,
Speaker 1: and if you think about it, it's a really daunting
Speaker 1: task to put into place because um on only does
Speaker 1: it require rolling out a massive amount of infrastructure upgrades,
Speaker 1: but you have to do it while the power is
Speaker 1: still on. Yes, exactly, you have to pop don't want
Speaker 1: their power to go out right. Yeah. Unlike let's say,
Speaker 1: if you want to upgrade a normal piece of technology,
Speaker 1: you could take it offline and work on it, fix it,
Speaker 1: test it. If it works well, then you can try
Speaker 1: and run it through a trial period and if that's going,
Speaker 1: then you're back up and running. You can't do that
Speaker 1: with the power grid because people still need power. You're
Speaker 1: gonna have to keep the power grid running even as
Speaker 1: you are upgrading it. Uh. It's a huge challenge and
Speaker 1: um and and it's way more than just the smart meters.
Speaker 1: Smart meters are kind of like that might be the
Speaker 1: the gateway into the whole smart grid system, but that's
Speaker 1: just giving a kind of a feedback loop between the
Speaker 1: power grid and the consumer. There's gonna be a lot
Speaker 1: more than needs to come into play before we can
Speaker 1: really call it a smart grid. One of the one
Speaker 1: of the UH projects that's involved with the Department of
Speaker 1: an G and the whole smart grid initiative is the
Speaker 1: visualizing Energy resources dynamically on Earth or very day system,
Speaker 1: and that's at oak Ridge National Laboratory. Yes, I decided
Speaker 1: to go with that that pronunciation. I'm sure they have
Speaker 1: aluminium in the laboratory, but I'm sanium in the laboratory. Well,
Speaker 1: the very day system is at least the Faraday system
Speaker 1: is is it relies on things like since it's or
Speaker 1: it will rely on things like sensors across the power grid. UM,
Speaker 1: it'll take into account whether information, it will model the
Speaker 1: grid based upon past demand. UM. It will kind of
Speaker 1: be like a big picture, real time glimpse at what's
Speaker 1: going on with the entire power grid at any given time.
Speaker 1: And that's very useful for things like load balancing. Like
Speaker 1: we mentioned, there might be one region that is under
Speaker 1: a particular UM strain needing a lot of power. Well,
Speaker 1: with the system, you would be able to see it
Speaker 1: uh in advance and be able to make adjustments quickly
Speaker 1: without being an emergency status because right now, when that
Speaker 1: stuff happens, you generally have a lot of people in
Speaker 1: power stations working feverishly to head off any kind of
Speaker 1: power outage or at least to to minimize it as
Speaker 1: much as they can. UM and it's it's really due
Speaker 1: to these people who are are working really really hard
Speaker 1: to keep our power going that we don't have bigger
Speaker 1: outages than we've seen before. It's, you know, it's not
Speaker 1: that our our system is particularly robust. It's that we've
Speaker 1: got some engineers who are bending over backwards to make
Speaker 1: sure the lights stay on. Yep, and um, it's just
Speaker 1: one of those things where we're it's it's takes so
Speaker 1: much work to get it in place. It's it's going
Speaker 1: to be a slow process to keep going. But I mean,
Speaker 1: for just for the advanced metering infrastructure, I just wanted
Speaker 1: to use it. Yes, which is the roll out of
Speaker 1: the smart meters. Uh. This sound like a brand new idea,
Speaker 1: but it's not. It's been They've been installing these in
Speaker 1: some places for years. Two thousand three, two thousand four,
Speaker 1: two thousand five. I've seen you know, people saying that
Speaker 1: they were working on the meters here in Georgia. They've
Speaker 1: been working on it for a number of years and
Speaker 1: are just starting to uh to bring them online this
Speaker 1: year so recently. Yeah, it's it takes a while to
Speaker 1: do all this stuff, and I can't imagine how the
Speaker 1: bigger stuff the neighborhood power generator type equipment is how
Speaker 1: you know where they're gonna put it, and all the
Speaker 1: public outcry of I don't want that thing in my backyard.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be a lot of work and it's gonna
Speaker 1: take a lot of time. There's then, just like we
Speaker 1: saw in Dallas, there's gonna be that natural, uh distrust
Speaker 1: that people have of new systems whenever something new is
Speaker 1: put in um, you know. And and it may be
Speaker 1: that that in general, and electricity becomes more expensive and
Speaker 1: it's gonna become more expensive anyway, just because consuming resources
Speaker 1: and the resources become more gas over time. But uh,
Speaker 1: it may mean that the electricity becomes a little more expensive.
Speaker 1: But because of the nature of the smart meters, you're
Speaker 1: able to to mitigate that to some extent by by
Speaker 1: just running your your electronics at the opportune times. And
Speaker 1: here's another interesting thing is if we do that enough,
Speaker 1: if enough people follow that kind of method, eventually you're
Speaker 1: actually gonna see the whole peak and trough thing level
Speaker 1: out a little bit. It will probably never truly become
Speaker 1: like a straight line, so that electricity costs the same
Speaker 1: amount no matter what time of day, you use it. Um,
Speaker 1: you know that would happen if everyone were balancing out
Speaker 1: the load, so that you know there was an equal
Speaker 1: number of people running stuff at any particular time of day.
Speaker 1: You probably never really see that, mainly because they're gonna
Speaker 1: be certain times a day they're gonna be the hottest
Speaker 1: or the coldest. That's gonna require a lot of electricity used.
Speaker 1: And plus most of us aren't doing laundry at you know,
Speaker 1: two am, that's my waffle eaten time eat waffles, two am.
Speaker 1: Good to know. I will be sure not to phone
Speaker 1: you in the middle of your waffling. We can blame
Speaker 1: Rachel for putting the thought of waffles into my head
Speaker 1: because she mentioned the the glorious location known as waffle house,
Speaker 1: where where you can get your your beloved hash brown scattered,
Speaker 1: covered and smothered. Okay, then are we Are we done
Speaker 1: talking about Jonathan what? I'm sorry I went to where
Speaker 1: there's pie and waffles. Are we done talking about Smart? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think so. I was done about ten minutes ago.
Speaker 1: Tell you the truth, I was just kind of vamping. Um,
Speaker 1: We'll tell you what. Let's let's move on to a
Speaker 1: little more. Oh, listener, mail listen, listener mail comes from
Speaker 1: Jeff from Chicago, and he says, Hi, my name is
Speaker 1: Jeff from Chicago, although a lot of people said there
Speaker 1: from Chicago because not many people would know where lincoln
Speaker 1: Wood is. I'm a long time listener and I recently
Speaker 1: listened to the roller Coaster episode. Upon hearing catapult launcher Coaster,
Speaker 1: I would think of the massive catapult launcher of the
Speaker 1: aircraft carrier. Have you guys ever wanted to hook up
Speaker 1: a cart to the aircraft catapult sit and hold tight?
Speaker 1: It would be fun or sit in the aircraft that's
Speaker 1: being launched. And the topic that I want you guys
Speaker 1: to cover as the history, how it works, and the
Speaker 1: future of it. I think the electromagnetic launcher is possible
Speaker 1: to launch an aircraft like the roller Coasters launched the
Speaker 1: train car thanks a lot. Well, of course, we're not
Speaker 1: gonna be able to to cover the whole uh catapult
Speaker 1: launch system of aircraft carriers right now, but that does
Speaker 1: sound like a good podcast in the future. I just
Speaker 1: wanted to say, though, Jeff um No, I have never
Speaker 1: had the desire to hook up a cart to the
Speaker 1: aircraft launch system on an aircraft carrier because I'm not crazy.
Speaker 1: I don't want to die. I don't want to be
Speaker 1: launched directly into the Atlantic or possibly in the back
Speaker 1: of a jet. Uh. None of those things sound particularly
Speaker 1: appealing to me. About the Pacific? Um No, not specific either.
Speaker 1: I you know, uh, you know. I can't think of
Speaker 1: any major body of water I want to be pushed
Speaker 1: into it that velocity, especially in a cart. I mean,
Speaker 1: I just think of sitting in a shopping cart and
Speaker 1: then screaming and crying until I die, which would be
Speaker 1: mercifully very shortly after the launch. But Jeff, hey, you
Speaker 1: know what you're crazy guy. Nice question. And Um as
Speaker 1: for being in an aircraft on it, oh, hell yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: oh yeah. If there's a if there's a plane around me,
Speaker 1: sure then I'll do it. Does have to be on,
Speaker 1: preferably with someone who really knows what they're doing in
Speaker 1: the cockpit. All of those things have to be there. Um.
Speaker 1: But no, I'm not going to do it in a
Speaker 1: cart and a jet. Sure. Thanks for the email. If
Speaker 1: any of you wish to email us with bizarre requests
Speaker 1: or find out exactly how crazy we are, you can
Speaker 1: do so. Our email address is tech stuff at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Check out our blogs. You can
Speaker 1: see those at blogs dot how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: We of course have articles about power grids and electricity
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. We don't have tech
Speaker 1: stuff Live anymore because we're on hiatus, which is nice.
Speaker 1: That means our Tuesdays are opening up again, but we're
Speaker 1: gonna come back with something else as soon as the
Speaker 1: studio is done being demolished. And uh well, that wraps
Speaker 1: this episode up. We will talk to you again really
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