Constraints, Consequences, and my introduction to Systems Thinking
Living in a nice house in a nice neighborhood on Lake Tuscaloosa as a young teen had more pluses than I could have written down. It also came with some duties and responsibilities. Mom and Dad bought this beautiful home and we finally had a place we could call home forever, or so we thought. It was a two story house on five acres in a pie shape and a private dock at the point that terminated the end of a private slew with just a few homes before it opened up to one of the wider sections of the North River leading into the Black Warrior River.
The upside: five acres to do anything we wanted, and thousands of acres of forest nearby.
The downside: mowing five acres.
Dad had a basic Craftsman riding mower for the larger sections, and an electric mower for the small patches on the front lawn and immediately around the house. I could ride that mower and let my mind wander anywhere it wanted. As a thirteen year old boy, I was always thinking about making or building or fixing something, or exploring in the forest on a survival trip.
The trips were more than just daydreaming. I would load a few things in my pockets and my pack, tell mom I was going camping, and disappear into the woods for a few days. I think today they might call that somewhere between a ferrel child and a neglectful parent, but it was the nineties and we just survived.
I would make snares and traps, basic shelters, eat off the land, and savor the solitude. This wasn’t back yard camping like city kids; I would survive off whatever I could get. From scraping ants onto a rock to make them into a jelly, to killing rabbit and squirrel and grouse, to capturing dew off the leaves for drinking water, I was a weekend survivalist.
But I couldn’t spend all my days in the woods. The lawn had to be mowed. One Saturday I was riding and making lines along what we called the side lot – an extra lot section dad bought with the house – and the craftsman quit running. I checked and noticed the low oil light was on, and put it in neutral to roll down the hill to the back deck where I could work on it.
A few minutes later I removed the drain plug, drained the oil onto the gravel (it was ok back then), refilled the oil, and went on my way mowing. Less than five minutes later the engine stopped again, but it was much louder this time. I had failed to put the oil plug back in, and I ran it dry. My chest felt as tight as those two over heated pistons.
I knew this would mean a good thrashing from my dad. He would be home by 3:45pm, and would expect to see the lawn done. I knew he would be disappointed that I broke his mower, but didn’t need to stack being a quitter on top of that. I needed to keep going but my options were limited. I got the electric mower out and all the extension cords I could find. I’d guess I had about four hundred feet of extension cords running to the push mower, but it didn’t catch fire as I mowed the hill and as much as I could before dad got home.
When he arrived he asked why I was using the push mower all the way out there. I let go of the handle and walked over to him. I wasn’t about to yell my tragedy at him. He had a tendency to make you feel his anger, tangibly, and I knew this would be one of those times.
I got up next to him by the road and explained that I broke his riding mower and was trying to finish the job. I had to tell him everything. No holding back, or there would be a greater price to pay. He walked me down to the Craftsman and tried starting it. It was fully locked up.
He got off the mower and started walking inside, then turned and said “You can mow the whole yard every weekend all summer with the push mower.” I went back to mowing, and later than night over supper he told me that I need to stop daydreaming and focus on what I’m doing. “Yes, sir.” I said quietly.
The next weekend I got up extra early to get started. The electric mower was such a dumb idea. This was before cordless tools. Why not just use a gas mower? It’s more powerful and no cords to manage. I mowed all morning as I thought through other ways to do this and what options might work.
It’s all about power, I thought. A gas engine is self propelled, but noisy. An AC electric powered motor is dependent on long extension cords. I wondered about other options. Could power be transmitted wirelessly from the house to the mower? I figured sound waves would be destructive. Laser light waves would too. That made me laugh. Star Wars to power a mower! I didn’t know what would work, but I thought through a variety of options. That wouldn’t work, but what I could make something that stored and created energy from nothing?
When I finished mowing I put the mower away and rolled up four hundred feet of cord, then asked my mom to take me to the library in Northport. Surely there would be some options there.
The librarian was a bit confused about what I was looking for, but pointed me in the direction of the scientific books. After glancing through a variety of books and making notes about all the ideas, including swappable batteries, I came across what I thought was the perfect solution: Perpetual Energy!
The one or two books that mentioned it said it was impossible. The first and second laws of thermodynamics explain that perpetual energy just isn’t possible. First, you can’t create energy, or produce more energy that you put into a system. Second, heat and friction will always burn up some of the energy being stored. These two laws together hated me and wanted me to fail, but I was sure I could come close.
Mom was waiting in the parking lot when I came out. She asked what I had learned and sort of listened as I explained my ideas and how the laws of physics were working against me. I was drawing up ideas the entire way home, then I ran down to the workshop to gather some parts and see what I could do. The rest of that evening (and many more) were spent sitting on my bedroom floor with electrical parts all over as I hacked a test system together.
I had a nine volt battery connected to a small light bulb facing a mini solar panel that fed back into the battery. No, it wasn’t a rechargeable battery. Who’s got the budget for those?!
I also built a control rig with a battery powering another light bulb, but no solar power feedback. Sure enough, the one rig that used the solar panel lasted about a day longer than the simpler control unit. This wasn’t THE solution, but it was heading in the right direction.
I messed with it using a variety of options including a fan that kept things cool, switched to an LED light bulb that loses less heat, encased the light and solar panel in a tin foil box so I leaked less energy from my closed loop system, and even added a diode as a one-way switch so the battery wouldn’t try to charge the solar panel. There are other improvements I wanted to make, but that’s took a trip to Radio Shack all the way in town.
Between my Radio Shack catalog and my Edmond Scientific catalog, I could explore all the parts in the world! I just needed to get into town to explore the Radio Shack stacks of drawers to find a buck booster that would convert my five volt solar panel output to 12 volts so the battery would try to accept the charge.
My plan to defeat the first and second laws of thermodynamics didn’t pan out, but I sure enjoyed trying. Meanwhile, dad got a used mower from a guy in Tuscaloosa and worked with me to fix it up so I could get back to escaping into the woods on the weekends. That meant I still had plenty of time to mow and ride while considering how all the physical constraints of things were not the enemies of my creativity.