Archive-name: Humour/sexlfcap.txt
Archive-author: 
Archive-title: Sex Life of a Capacitor, The - revisited


A friend of mine informed me that the same "Sex Life of an Electron"
story has been floating around for over 30 years now.  We decided
it was time for a revision.  Here's the latest update - if you have
anything to add, post it and I'll add the new lines in and come
up with the all-new revised story suitable for publication.


                     The Sex Life of a Capacitor
                    =============================

One night, when his charge was pretty high, Mickey-farad decided to seek
out a cute coil to let him discharge.  He picked up Milli-amp and took her
for a ride on his mega-cycle.  They rode across a Wheatstone bridge and
stopped at a magnetic field by a flowing current and laid down on a nice
ground plane.  All of Mickey-farad's sensors indicated the possibility
of mutual induction.  He proceeded to strobe her test points until he
found the nodes that showed the highest reactance.

Attracted by her characteristic curves, Mickey-farad soon had her fully charged
and excited.  Gradually, her resistance dropped to a minimum.  With a 
minimum of power, Mikey-farad soon had her stripped of her insulation.
Seeing her open collector, Mickey-farad took out his high-voltage probe and 
inserted it into her mating socket, connecting them in parallel.  He began
oscillating her shunt at high frequency.  Mickey-farad wasn't shielded, but
figured that the possiblity of contracting a computer virus was low since 
Milli-amp was mil-spec and factory fresh.  With her leads already vertically
polarized and with such a tight tolerance, he wasn't about to crowbar now.

Fully excited, Milli-amp murmured, "Mho, Mho, give me Mho."  Mickey-farad,
with his tube operating at a maximum, felt her potential begin to rise.
Milli-amp soon reached her maximum flow.  The excessive current overheated
her shunt and deprived her of all of her electrons.  Soon her voltage
climbed past breakdown and she began to arc.  She discharged exponentially 
in a violent avalanche.  Mickey-farad tried to maintain his regulation, but 
it was too late.  He went over rated capacity and released a huge charge and
the excessive current almost broke his lead.  They disconnected to allow 
the junction temperature to drop while Mickey-farad began recharging.

They fluxed all night, trying out all the various connections until
Micro-farad's magnet had a soft core and had lost all of its field strength.
Later, Milli-amp tried self-induction and damaged her input connector.

Meanwhile, with his batteries fully discharged, Micro-farad was unable to
excite his field, so they spent the whole night reversing polarity and blowing
each other's fuses.  Drained of all of their energy, they decided to
go off line but arranged for a future interface possibly including
a bipolar device interested in a delta-y configuration.

Waking up and thinking about the previous night's episode, Mickey-farad
tried self-oscillation, but with his power supply so far drained from
the huge load of the night before, he was unable to reach maximum
capacity.

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