On Mon, 19 Apr 2010 15:25:48 -0700, the infamous Gunner Asch
scrawled the following:

On Mon, 19 Apr 2010 18:09:53 -0400, Bob Engelhardt
wrote:

Steve B wrote:
... I have found more than one small item that went
flying, and I had very little confidence in finding one of them. It's kinda
like fishing.

Yeah, "kinda like fishing" in that sometimes you catchem & sometimes you
don't. I lost a small part once that I desperately needed - ran a
magnet over every square inch of the shop floor (on my hands & knees) &
didn't find it. Someone here once posted that really small parts
sometimes get into a quantum mechanical state where they tunnel to a
small town in Kansas. I believe it.

Bob

"As physicists now know, there is some nonzero probability that any
object will, through quantum effects, tunnel from the workbench in your
shop to Floyds Knobs, Indiana (unless your shop is already in Indiana,
in which case the object will tunnel to Trotters, North Dakota).

The smaller mass of the object, the higher the probability.
Therefore, disassembled parts, particularly small ones,
of machines disappear much faster than assembled machines."
Greg Dermer: rec.crafts.metalworking

When I was wrenching, I found a neat little gizmo on the SnapOn truck
which I immediately confiscated from it. I called it a Jesus Clip
Retainer. Its function was to grab those tiny little itsy bitsy clips
on the carb linkage to keep them from flying off when you install or
uninstall them. Otherwise, you wander around saying "Jesus, where'd
that little sumbish clip go?" for an hour, each time, after you hear
it ricochet off 'lebenty seven different metal objects during its trip
to the floor, or worse. Yeah, you know the ones I'm talking about.
They're like C or E clips with portions of SuperBall mixed in.

Wiki has a faskinatin' story on the latter object. http://fwd4.me/9td

---
A book burrows into your life in a very profound way
because the experience of reading is not passive.
--Erica Jong