Looking for a needle in a haystack meaning. Needle in a haystack - Kingdom Come Deliverance walkthrough

In the current version of the game Kingdom Come: Deliverance the quest " Needle in a haystack" has many bugs and inaccuracies. Most likely, you will find it too boring, and the desire to complete it as soon as possible will only increase - that’s what we’ll do. Be careful, spoilers ahead.

Saint

The saint from whom you need to knock out the die is the novice Anthony. You should start with dialogues with novices. Talk to everyone, and then tell Anthony that he is the Holy One. Then follow the routine and, when 11 o’clock comes, go to the dining room on the first floor. Look around the tables and find a free place where you can sit down and have a meal.

Place for a meal. You need to come here at 11 o'clock.

After some time, you can get up - you will find that you have been poisoned. A little later, Henry will lose consciousness. When the main character comes to his senses, Anthony will be in front of him. He will admit everything and offer several options for what to do next.

• You can kill him right away.
• You can run with him.

We kill Anthony right in the monastery

In the first case, everything seems quite simple - we kill Anthony, take the dice, go in search of the key to the monastery (from the dining room through the doors in the back, the key will be on one of the shelves), leave the monastery. Now you need to return your things - we go to the place where you put them and pick them up. But a new problem appears - things become stolen (mini-spoiler, don’t worry about this, in the next story quest you will part with them again).

Escape with Anthony

The novice will ask you to get keys and blood. We go to the dining room and find a note near the boiler. In it we indicate what we need" Wineskin with blood". The next morning, a ready-made order will be waiting for you in this place. The key can be found in the back of the dining room (described above) or stolen from the sleeping prior.

When you have the necessary items, you can contact the Saint. He will suggest meeting after evening prayer. You can rewind the time to 18:00 and talk to him.

Move along with the Saint to the exit. After the monastery is behind, a conversation will begin. We can hand over Svyatosha to the richman or let him go.

Write in the comments which method of completing this quest you chose and what difficulties you encountered. For example, it is already known about methods of entering the monastery through scaffolding (you need to stock up on bandages to heal after a fall) without joining the novices.

The V. Potanin Charitable Foundation has a large program of support for young university teachers who successfully combine teaching and scientific work, which has been running for several years. A special competition has been organized to distribute grants. There are many requirements for applicants, but among other things, young teachers must give a popular science lecture on their specialty to senior students. The implementation of this wonderful idea, on the one hand, makes it possible to understand whether the applicant knows his subject, on the other hand, there are quite obvious benefits from such lectures: students broaden their horizons, receiving information on related and sometimes completely distant specialties. The Foundation gave the editors of Science and Life the opportunity to get acquainted with all the lectures given by grant applicants. We have published some of them. We were attracted to these lectures by the simplicity and clarity of presentation (lecture “A smile will make everyone brighter”, “Science and Life” No. 3, 2009), the importance of the topic (“When leaving, turn off the light!”, “Science and Life” No. 6 , 2009), a modern idea of ​​long-known things (“Hope and support”, “Science and Life” No. 8, 2009), an unexpected look at seemingly obvious phenomena (“Biological signal fields...” , “Science and Life” No. 1, 2009). We present to our readers a lecture given by Lyudmila Trukhacheva, Candidate of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Associate Professor at the Moscow Medical Academy. I. M. Sechenov. The story is truly detective...

On an early August morning in 1961, hundreds of crazed birds attacked the seaside town of Capitola in the US state of California. Hitherto harmless gray petrels, in flocks and individually, crashed into windows and walls of houses at high speed, dived into street lamps and attacked passers-by. This incident inspired Alfred Hitchcock's film The Birds.

A quarter of a century later, in the winter of 1987, another mysterious story happened on Prince Edward Island off the North Atlantic coast of Canada: more than a hundred people became victims of severe food poisoning. It turned out that all the victims ate blue mussels. In addition to the usual symptoms - vomiting, cramps, diarrhea and headache - patients experienced loss of orientation, a feeling of panic, amnesia, and in some cases, seizures and coma. Almost all of them showed symptoms of a mental disorder; patients showed uncontrolled aggressiveness, often accompanied by crying or laughter. Unfortunately, three victims could not be helped - they died in the first days. More than a quarter of the other victims had impaired short-term memory. They could not remember anything that happened after the poisoning, some did not recognize their loved ones.

It later turned out that both cases - the first with “crazy birds” and the second with “poisoned mussels” - were the result of exposure to the same toxic agent. The condition it causes is now known as amnestic shellfish poisoning syndrome (ASP). However, there have been no previous reports of mussel food poisoning with such neurological consequences.

To clarify all the circumstances of what happened, as well as to prevent similar cases, the Canadian Department of Fisheries commissioned a group of marine biologists and chemists to isolate and identify the toxic agent.

Initial testing of the mussels for known bacterial and viral pathogens was inconclusive. Tests for heavy metals and pesticides also came back negative. The samples taken for analysis included thousands of different chemical compounds. How can one isolate one component from such a complex mixture without knowing anything about its physical or chemical properties? The task is no easier than finding a needle in a haystack.

Let's assume that we have the ability to determine whether there is a needle in the stack or not. Then the search algorithm will be as follows. First, we divide the stack into two halves and check whether there is a needle in one of the parts. If not, discard this half, divide the remaining half in half and look for the needle in the next halves. Such “split-drop-divide” manipulations will ultimately lead to the fact that the last remaining part will be nothing more than the desired needle. The main strategy of the researchers, who were faced with the task of finding and isolating the toxin, was built according to the same scheme.

First of all, it was necessary to develop a test that would reliably indicate the toxicity of the objects being studied. And here there were experiments on animals. It was found that mice exhibit the most characteristic reaction to the toxin. After introducing small amounts of the test sample, if a toxin was present in it, the experimental animals experienced a clear neurological reaction - the mice began to uncontrollably scratch and comb their shoulders with their hind legs. The test is cruel, but in light of the tragedy that occurred, scientists had no other choice.

To separate the complex components in the poisoned mussel tissue samples, the scientists used standard physicochemical methods. Both toxic and non-toxic mussel samples were processed. This approach is necessary for subsequent comparative analysis, because any difference between the samples could provide a clue to solving the mystery.

Let's follow all the steps of the process shown in the diagram and try to understand what happened at each stage.

Separation based on solubility and volatility

In the first three stages, the researchers used extraction and evaporation as a general strategy.

Extraction is the separation of a mixture of substances based on differences in solubility. Housewives are well aware of the fact that the solubility of substances in different solvents is different from the example of vanillin, which is poorly soluble in water and highly soluble in alcohol. In liquid-liquid extraction, the solute is distributed between two liquid immiscible phases. Typically one phase is water and the other is an organic solvent.

During evaporation, the solution is concentrated as a result of the evaporation of the solvent. The extract can be evaporated to a small volume and thereby increase the concentration of the analyzed component.

Now that we know the benefits of extraction and evaporation, let’s return to the search for the toxin.

To prevent possible destruction of the desired compound as a result of heating or interaction with a solvent, extraction was carried out at room temperature with an aqueous solution of methanol, a medium-strength solvent. The extraction was insufficient, but nevertheless successful: mice showed the same neurological response to the methanol extract as to the original oyster samples. The extract was then concentrated by evaporation. The separated and condensed steam was non-toxic, but the resulting residue gave the necessary reaction in mice. It became clear that poison is a non-volatile substance.

A second extraction was carried out. This time the concentrated extract was shaken with a mixture of polar and non-polar solvents. We used dichloromethane and water: these solvents do not mix and form two separate layers.

Colored substances were found in the dichloromethane fraction—phytoplankton pigments (in other words, algae). And this could already be the key to clarifying the nature of the toxin. However, the pigments themselves are not poisonous, and the dichloromethane fraction gave a negative result in experimental mice. But the toxin was present in the water layer. This allowed us to believe that the desired object was apparently a polar, ionizable substance. Now the researchers could concentrate on the water fraction.

At the next stages, chromatographic methods of analysis were used. Here we have to go a little deeper into the theory...

Separation in motion

Chromatographic analysis, one of the most sensitive methods, first proposed by the Russian scientist Mikhail Semenovich Tsvet at the beginning of the 20th century, by the beginning of the 21st century had turned into a powerful tool, without which it is difficult to imagine analytical chemistry, and not only that.

The first experiment in separating and analyzing a substance of complex composition, carried out by M. S. Tsvet in 1903, is surprisingly simple. The researcher passed a chlorophyll solution through a tube (or, as they now say, a column) containing chalk powder, gradually diluting it with benzene. After some time, rings colored by chlorophyll components in different colors became visible in the chalk column. Having cut the column, M. S. Tsvet isolated them in their pure form and carried out a chemical analysis of each individual component.

All of us have probably been involved in chromatography in one way or another, and our parents were especially lucky in this sense. After all, in previous years, schoolchildren wrote in ink. And if a blotter fell on an ink stain, then the ink solution was divided into several “fronts” on it.

Chromatography itself is based on the distribution of one of several substances between two phases (for example, between a solid and a gas, between two liquids, etc.), with one of the phases constantly moving. The better a substance is sorbed (absorbed) or dissolved in the stationary phase, the lower the speed of its movement, and vice versa, the less a compound is sorbed, the greater the speed of movement. As a result, if at first we have a mixture of compounds, then gradually all of them, pushed by the mobile phase, move towards the “finish line” at different speeds and eventually separate.

After separation, all components must be identified and quantified. This is done using detectors that have little to do with the chromatographic process itself and are based on the various physicochemical properties of the substances being studied.

In modern chromatographs, the length of columns in which substances are separated reaches hundreds of meters. A few milligrams (10 -3 g) of the mixture are sufficient for analysis, and components weighing up to several picograms (10 -12 g) can be detected in it.

These are, in general terms, the basics of chromatographic analysis. Now it’s time to return to the search for a toxic agent in mussel samples.

Separation based on differences in polarity

So, column chromatography was used to separate the mixture in the remaining aqueous layer into its simple components. The sample was passed through a narrow tube containing XAD-2 resin microspheres. These microspheres retain non-polar, uncharged molecules and allow charged ions to pass through. XAD-2 is particularly effective for the separation of organic bases and acids.

Ionized acids pass through the column and exit before other organic compounds.

Of the many fractions that passed through XAD-2, only one turned out to be toxic. At the final stage, this fraction was separated using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Here again, the polar solution containing the sample was passed through a column with a non-polar sorbent as a stationary phase. The resulting highly purified fraction contained all the poison of the poisoned mussels. So finally the toxin was isolated.

Separation based on charge, size and shape of molecules

However, the researchers had to make sure that the final fraction isolated by HPLC actually contained the same toxic component. To do this, it was decided to separate the aqueous fraction of XAD-2 again, but using high-voltage electrophoresis on paper.

Electrophoresis is a method of separating ions based on differences in their relative charges (the ratio of charge to mass). The ions located between the positive and negative electrodes, under the influence of the electric field, begin to move towards the electrode with a charge of opposite sign. Typically, the higher the charge-to-mass ratio of an ion, the faster it moves toward the electrode. Small, highly charged ions move ahead of large, low-charge ions. The shape of the molecules also affects the speed of movement. Thus, molecules with more concentrated charges move faster.

The researchers placed the sample on a strip of filter paper. Both ends of the strip were immersed in buffer solutions, each of which contained an electrode. During the analysis, the ions of the substances contained in the analyzed sample moved at different speeds and were separated in the form of separate stripes on the paper. In order for these stripes to “appear”, the paper was sprayed with a special reagent.

During electrophoresis of the XAD-2 fraction, an unknown band was detected next to the glutamic acid band (one of the reference samples). This band was absent in control tissue samples of nontoxic mussels. In addition, the color of the unknown band was completely different from the color of the glutamic acid band. The band containing the unknown substance was removed from the paper, and the resulting sample was injected into the HPLC column. It turned out that this sample was identical in retention time to the main substance in the final fraction separated by HPLC. In addition, this sample exhibited the same toxicity as the sample studied by HPLC.

Toxin identification by charge and mass

At the final stage, the chemical formula and molecular weight of the isolated toxin had to be determined. The problem was solved using mass spectrometry.

This method allows you to determine the composition of the molecule of a substance by measuring the ratio of the mass of ions to their charge. First, neutral molecules and atoms are converted into charged particles - ions, and then separated using the laws of motion of charged particles in a magnetic or electric field.

So, using mass spectrometry, scientists found the molecular weight
(312 g/mol) and the molecular formula (C 15 H 21 NO 6) of the isolated toxin. Spectroscopic analysis revealed the presence of double bonds and spectra characteristic of an amino group. And when comparing the spectra of the substance with spectra in an international database, the compound was identified as domoic acid.

Domoic acid is a kind of “Trojan horse” in the world of molecules. Nerve cells (neurons) mistake it for glutamic acid molecules, and this mistake becomes fatal for them. Glutamate (the ionized form of glutamic acid) is a neurotransmitter, a molecule whose responsibilities include transmitting nerve impulses from one cell to another. When a glutamate molecule binds to a glutamate receptor on the surface of a cell, the receptor opens a special channel for calcium ions to enter the cell. The influx of charges results in an electrical potential that propagates along the cell membrane and transmits excitation information to other neurons. Frequent stimulation of this mechanism can lead to the emergence of new connections between neurons, so glutamate plays a key role in the processes of thinking, learning, and memorizing information.

But an excess amount of glutamate leads to uncontrolled excitation of the cell and ultimately to its death. Moreover, this process is cascading, since overexcitation of a dying cell is transmitted along the chain to nearby neurons. Ultimately, this biochemical cascade can cause brain damage and neurodegenerative disorders.

Domoic acid is similar to glutamic acid. However, the five-membered ring contained in its structure makes the molecule less flexible than glutamine, which causes domoic acid to bind more tightly to the glutamine receptor. And as a result, its stimulating effect is 30-100 times higher.

But the question remains - how did domoic acid get into the tissues of mussels, as well as into the anchovies that birds feed off the coast of California? Here we must remember that phytoplankton pigments were found in one of the fractions after extraction. A thorough study of domoic acid led to the discovery of its carriers - needle-shaped diatoms called Pseudo-nitzschia pungens. These algae are found in all the oceans of the world and, therefore, could become the beginning of the food chain in many regions. This is how birds that ate anchovies, which in turn ate poisonous algae, became poisoned by domoic acid.

Currently, most coastal countries carry out continuous monitoring of seafood using the HPLC method in order to promptly detect the presence of domoic acid. The measures were successful, and there have been no reports of poisonings since 1987.

The solution to this detective story would hardly have been possible without modern physical and chemical methods of analysis.

Literature:
V. S. Asatiani. Chemistry of our body. - M.: Nauka, 1969, 304 p.
F. Bayburtsky. Chromatography is a simple way to analyze complex substances// Science and Life, 1998, No. 2.

In general, needles in a dream mean troubles or things that you don’t feel like doing. A dull needle, both in life and in a dream, cannot do much harm, but it does not do any good. This dream suggests that a loved one will soon become indifferent to you.

Pulling a needle out of some part of the body in a dream means that obstacles in business are causing you a lot of trouble and problems, but after such a dream everything should change - you will feel relief.

Buying needles in a dream means reconciliation with a friend. A needle and thread in a dream means that your relationship with a loved one or partner will be like a thread and a needle. Where the needle goes, so goes the thread.

The thread always follows the needle. Try to figure out who is meant by the thread and who is meant by the needle. Such a dream can also predict that you will try to achieve the same success as another person. The length of the thread in this case indicates how close your relationship with the other person will be. See interpretation: threads.

If you dream that you pricked yourself with a needle, then expect a quarrel with your loved ones. See interpretation: prick.

A dream in which you saw that you had lost a needle means the loss of a friend or loved one. Looking for a needle means wasted effort. It’s not for nothing that there is a saying “looking for a needle in a haystack.”

Finding a needle in a dream is an indication of the danger that threatens you, which will come from where you do not expect it. Searching and finding a needle is a good dream. It means that you will soon find new friends.

A broken needle in a dream means a break in a relationship with a loved one. After such a dream, expect great experiences and loneliness.

A dream in which you saw yourself working with a needle means: expect a quarrel with a loved one. For spouses, such a dream predicts that their family life will soon crack.

Needle in a haystack

Invention theory studies inventive creativity with the goal of creating effective methods for solving inventive problems.

This definition contains a thought that may seem “heretical”: are the existing methods bad and need to be replaced? But using these methods, people have made the greatest inventions! The modern invention industry is based on these methods, producing many tens of thousands of new technical ideas every year. Why are existing methods bad?

Let's not rush to answer this question; let's first look at how the inventive problem is usually solved.

In general, inventors are not very willing and do not often talk about the ways they came to a new technical idea. One of the happy exceptions is the book by B. S. Egorov “The Secret of NSE”.

Boris Sergeevich Egorov, a talented inventor, describes in detail and objectively the history of the creation of a winding machine. Let's take advantage of this and follow the inventor's train of thought.

So, first of all, the task.

“Imagine a large electronic computer, in the depths of which there are several thousand tiny ring transformers. Each of them has a hole of only 2 millimeters. On each of these rings there is wound a very thin wire, thinner than a human hair, covered with a silk sheath. This, of course, had to be done manually without damaging the delicate insulation. It was grueling work...”

The task is clear: there is a small ring made of ferrite; you need to quickly and carefully wrap this ring with thin insulated wire.

A few years earlier, B.S. Egorov successfully solved a similar problem - then it was necessary to mechanize the winding of telephone filter chokes. Outwardly, both tasks are completely similar: there is a ring and there is a wire that needs to be wrapped around this ring. But a tiny ferrite ring is much smaller than a telephone choke ring, and this fundamentally changed the problem.

“I must say that the problem that had to be solved did not seem very difficult to me at first. But when I came close to her, this opinion had to be changed.

The difficulty was primarily that the ring on which the wire should be wound was only 2 millimeters in size.”

Indeed, in BESM-2, for example, ferrite toroids of the K-28 brand are used, having the following dimensions: outer diameter - 3.1 mm, inner diameter - 2.0 mm, height - 1.2 mm. The storage device of the same BESM-2 uses even more miniature VT-1 toroids with an internal diameter of 1.31 mm.

These rings were wound manually using a bobbin. The spool is, in essence, a needle that carries a supply of wire. In Fig. 1 shows an enlarged view of both the ring and the spool. The cross section of the ring (toroid) can be square, rectangular or round - it doesn’t matter.

Of course, the task would be greatly simplified if the ring were composite. But ferrite toroids are made using powder metallurgy methods: the material is pressed and then sintered. No winding will withstand the pressures and temperatures used in this case, so you have to wind the wire onto a ready-made one-piece ring.

Rice. 1. We had to wind the wire onto the rings manually - using a spool.

“What size should a bobbin be? Like the eye of a needle? It immediately became clear that the bobbin, which was used to lay the wire on my first machine, would have to be abandoned; it would be too small. This made resolving the issue more difficult. Is it possible to do without it, replace it, or use a completely new winding principle? But what should this principle be? Questions haunted me...

Shouldn't we use a pendulum here?

This opinion was shared by many comrades with whom I had to consult. And I decided to solve the problem using a pendulum. The principle was simple: two pendulums, and a ring between them; there is a needle on the pendulum; The right pendulum uses a needle to thread the wire through the ring and brings the needle to the left one. The ring rises; the needle goes back, and everything repeats all over again. This is how the wire is wound around the ring. It’s amazingly simple, and it’s all done without a bobbin.”

A model of the machine was built. Her tests gave negative results - the wire was tensioned only when the needle was in the extreme position, but when it was in motion, the wire sagged, so the turns lay out at random.

“I took up my work again, with renewed energy. I tried to place the pendulums differently, to arrange the rings differently, and this way and that I tried to change the course of the pendulums, but the thread still sagged. I have done over three hundred experiments. In the end I came to the conclusion that pendulums should be abandoned.

It became clear that we should look for a different operating principle of the machine. But which one? I tried several different options, but none of them worked. Then the idea arose to wind the wire using compressed air, which would act as pendulums. The same needle will be pushed through the ring not by a pendulum, but by compressed air.”

Egorov built another model of the machine. But compressed air did not help: the wire sagged, just like in a pendulum machine.

“And then the thought occurred to me that the very principle of winding a wire around a ring is not suitable. After all, in all variants the principle was the same: the needle stitches the ring. But it does not allow you to hold the wire in tension. Consequently, we must abandon the use of the needle itself and propose in its place a new, completely new principle. But what can you offer in return? No one could answer this question."

Time passed. Egorov did not stop thinking about the problem. And then one day a new idea appeared. It happened on the train.

“I look at my neighbors, and suddenly my gaze is drawn to an old woman who is knitting lace. She has a hook in her hands. She makes a movement with her hand - and the hook makes a ring, another movement with her hand - and another ring. I automatically look, without taking my eyes off, at the knitter’s hands. Ring... Ring... I mentally repeat the movement of the hook once, again and again. Then I already imagine the movement of the hook not in the hands of the old woman, but in my machine...

What if, instead of a bobbin and pendulums, we use hooks in the machine? The hook will grab the wire that will pass through the ring. And with a special spring it will be possible to maintain the wire in a taut state. I take out a needle and thread, make a hook out of the needle, and try to repeat the old lady’s movements. Once... another. Is this ordinary hook really the secret of the winding machine, has the solution to a seemingly insoluble problem been found? Yes, that is right. The coils lie flat on the ring. This is the very principle that I have been looking for for so long. With the help of hooks, you can carry out strong, reliable winding of turns on the ring.”

This is how the principle of the winding machine - the famous NSE - appeared.

What can be said about the paths that the inventor followed?

Some features immediately catch the eye. The search was carried out, essentially, at random. Or, as psychologists say, by the “trial and error” method. The idea arose: “What if we do it this way?” Then followed its theoretical or practical testing. One idea turned out to be unsuccessful, a second, a third was put forward...

This method is shown schematically in Fig. 2. From the point that we will call “Problem”, the inventor must get to the “Solution” point. Where exactly this point is located is, of course, unknown in advance. The inventor creates a specific search concept for a PC, i.e., chooses the direction of the search (“And I decided to solve the problem using a pendulum”). “Throws” begin in the chosen direction (they are conventionally indicated by arrows): “What if you try this?” And then it becomes clear that the whole search concept is wrong - the search is going in the wrong direction (“In the end I came to the conclusion that pendulums should be abandoned”). The inventor returns to the task, puts forward a new research concept (“Then the idea arose to wind the wire using compressed air...”) and begins a new series of “throws.”

In practice, the number of attempts is usually much greater than shown in the diagram. Egorov talks about three hundred modifications of the first model of the machine alone; in general, when searching for a solution using the “trial and error” method, the number of attempts is very large. It takes thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of “what ifs?” to find a successful solution.

Rice. 2. Search scheme using the “trial and error” method.

And one more very important feature. In the diagram, the arrows are denser in the direction opposite to the “Solution”. This is, of course, no coincidence. The fact is that tests are not as chaotic as they seem at first glance. When starting a search, the inventor relies on his previous experience. Egorov had once already created a machine for winding telephone chokes, and when solving a new problem, the thought at first inevitably went in the usual direction: a spool, like last time, is needed, but it must be very thin; Let's replace it with a needle, i.e. the same spool, but without a supply of wire.

In fact, the failure of almost all attempts is due to the desire to use the needle in one way or another. This initial bias is shown in the diagram by the “vector of inertia” VI, emerging from the “Problem” point and directed away from the “Solution”. A big step forward was the idea that the needle should be abandoned altogether...

We will continue to talk about the trial and error method. But the reader now has an excellent opportunity to try this method himself.

Problem 1

Egorov’s machine copes well with winding rings if their internal diameter is at least 2 mm. However, miniaturization of electronic machines requires smaller rings. As before, they have to be wound manually. How to mechanize it? Try to solve this problem. Without the theory of invention.

The task is extremely clear: there is a ring made of ferrite; the internal diameter of the ring is, say, 0.5 mm. Thin insulated wire is also available. It is necessary to mechanize the winding.

The number of turns of wire, generally speaking, depends on the purpose of the toroid and varies widely: in toroidal transformers there are usually several hundred of them, while toroidal elements of storage devices have only three turns. Let’s assume for concreteness that twenty turns of wire need to be applied to each ring.

Two additional considerations. First: the task is educational, so you cannot change it, i.e., propose solutions related to abandoning the use of ferrite rings. Second: the winding method can be anything, but it must ensure high performance: hundreds of thousands and even millions of rings are used in the storage device of an electronic machine.

To solve this problem you do not need any highly specialized knowledge. But even an experienced inventor is unlikely to be able to find a good solution through trial and error. To tell the truth, I am sure that you, the reader, will not solve the problem. It's a pretty simple calculation. Suppose you are no less talented than Edison. But Edison, by his own admission, had to work on one invention for an average of seven years. At least a third of this time was spent searching for an idea.

Here is what the inventor Nikolai Tesla, who at one time worked in Edison’s laboratory, wrote: “If Edison needed to find a needle in a haystack, he would not waste time determining the most likely location of its location. He would immediately, with the feverish diligence of a bee, begin to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. His methods are extremely ineffective, and he can waste enormous amounts of time and energy and achieve nothing unless he is helped by a stroke of luck. At first I watched his activities with sadness, realizing that a little theoretical knowledge and calculations would have saved him thirty percent of his work. But he had genuine contempt for bookish education and mathematical knowledge, trusting entirely to his instincts as an inventor and the common sense of an American.”

You are unlikely to solve the winding problem, but still give it a few tries. In the future, we will see how this problem is solved using the invention technique. And then you will be able, based on your experience, to compare the search for a solution through “trial and error” with the systematic methods that this book talks about.

The winding machine was created by a talented worker-inventor. Well, what if a scientist is searching for a solution? Does the trial and error method then increase the effectiveness?

Some time ago, an article by E. Veretennikov, candidate of technical sciences, was published in the magazine “Inventor and Innovator”.

This is another one of those rare occasions when an inventor talks about the ways in which he came up with a new idea. The problem solved by E. Veretennikov is not particularly difficult, and the fact that the inventor has an academic degree makes this case quite indicative.

Here's what the inventor says:

“Our Kuibyshev Industrial Institute cooperates with the Kuibyshev Bit Plant. The plant produces bits. It seems to me that anyone who gets to the roller bit assembly site will definitely think: “Isn’t it possible to do this somehow differently?” The picture is, to put it mildly, unattractive. The chisel foot journal is coated with thick solid oil-graphite lubricant. This lubricant acts as glue. It holds on two horizontal platforms - the axle raceways - the bearing rollers installed there, which would otherwise slide in different directions. When two rows of rollers are assembled, a roller cutter is put on the axle. Assembly is done with bare hands. Mineral oils are harmful to the skin. In addition, this mass sometimes contains sharp metal splinters that injure the hands of the collector. The work is hard and requires high qualifications.

This type of assembly, when it is necessary to first hold the parts in a certain position to each other, is very common. For intermediate fixation, they use clamps, clamps, clips, and temporarily hold parts by soldering or welding, adhesives, or, as in this case, thick sticky lubricants.

Assembling the roller bits got me thinking about, for example, how do you keep the rollers on the trunnion when putting the roller on top?”

So, the task is as follows.

To assemble a section of a drill bit, you must first line the cutter with two rows of rollers. There are several dozen rollers in a row. It is clear that it is impossible to hold all the rollers with your hands at the same time. This means that we need to find some way (instead of “gluing” it with thick ointment) that allows us to hold the rollers on the raceways of the axle until the axle is inserted into the roller cutter. This method should be simple, productive, allowing for further automation of assembly.

“The first thing that came to mind,” the inventor further says, “was, of course, a rope. To tie! But how to remove it after assembly? Well, you can bind it with a film that will subsequently melt without a trace, dissolving in oil. Perhaps this is the way out... except that assembly automation is not at all simplified.

Further thought led to a solution that turned out to be successful. It is necessary to stick the rollers to the trunnion, but not with glue or any other substance. They will be held by magnetic forces!”

Let's say right away: E. Veretennikov made a good invention. The story of this invention is a bad romance with a good ending. In fact, the problem arose a long time ago, and then the means necessary to solve it already existed. The invention was at least 20-30 years late! E. Veretennikov himself emphasizes that everyone who enters the assembly area will definitely notice the need to improve the assembly of bits. The task seemed to scream: “Please pay attention to me! It’s so important and so easy to find a solution!” But people passed by...

This is not an accident: in every branch of production there is a large number of inventions that need and can be made (with the modern development of science and technology), but which have not yet been made.

Let's now see how the inventor's work went. The first thought is “of course, rope.” Both “of course” and “rope” are notable here. The starting point for reflection is existing structures (tie clamps, etc.). It is impossible to use a clamp - a “metal rope”. Hence the idea: use “just a rope.”

The idea of ​​a “rope” so captivated the inventor’s imagination that he did not want to part with it. And the next step is again a “rope” (here it is, the “vector of inertia”!), this time plastic... It is clear that this modern version of the “rope” also did not lead to a solution to the problem.

Further thought followed, which finally gave the correct solution: we must use magnetic forces.

Meanwhile, this task is one of those in which the exact formulation of the question automatically gives the desired answer. Creativity here lies in the choice of task itself! It is required, we repeat, that the rollers placed around the axle during assembly do not fall until the axle is inserted into the cutter. A metal piece must be pressed - temporarily - against another metal piece.

It is enough to pose the problem this way, and out of ten people with knowledge equivalent to eight years of high school, five will immediately answer: “Magnet!”

You can further clarify the task: the metal part should “without anything” (ideal case) be pressed against another part (not too much, just to balance its weight). In this case, out of ten answers, eight or nine will be correct.

In the future, when we become more familiar with the method of invention, other mistakes made in solving this problem will become obvious. But now we can draw some conclusions:

1. The inventor went from the known to the unknown: he took an already existing device (a metal clamp) as a prototype and tried to modify it. This led to a series of bad decisions.

This is what happened with Egorov. Maybe the “vector of inertia” is always directed away from the solution?..

2. The correct solution required a fundamentally different approach from the inventor. What was the path to this new principle has eluded the inventor. He confidently and logically explains how the transition from one unsuccessful idea to another occurred; and then - a break and, instead of an explanation, meaningless words: “further thoughts led...”.

Let us remember that Egorov also does not explain why the correct idea did not appear earlier.

3. How successful the outcome of the solution is, the method of searching for this solution is equally imperfect.

Magnetic assembly could have been invented much earlier. Long overdue economic necessity in this invention, and appeared long ago technical feasibility make it. But the inventors either did not notice the problem or did not take it seriously. A kind of “simple” problem was allowed. And they had to pay dearly for it: hard and dirty work was done by hand for years.

Of course, if we talk about a historically large distance, inventions appear naturally. Thus, the steamship could not be created before the advent of the steam engine, and the steam engine was invented when economic necessity arose. However, inventions are often late without good reason: there are all the objective conditions to invent something, but this something is never invented...

The natural course of the historical development of technology does not mean at all that you can sit idly by, and inventions, out of respect for the laws of technology development, will appear on their own. The “inventive industry”, which produces the most valuable products - new technical ideas, works, in essence, using artisanal methods. There are fewer “products” produced, and they are of worse quality than possible. Sometimes it is even difficult to understand why this or that “inventive product” did not appear much earlier.

We can give the following example. Even at the dawn of motoring, a fan was installed on the engine. And even then, every driver knew: at low air temperatures a fan is not needed, moreover, it is harmful - it wastes energy and overcools the engine. But the switch-off fan was invented only in 1951! Here the “downtime” dragged on for almost half a century, and they had to pay for it with rivers of uselessly burned fuel.

Let us now see what the “technology of creativity” is in more complex cases. Let's take for example the history of the invention of the meniscus telescope.

Even before the war, Leningrad optician D. D. Maksutov was working on the creation of a school telescope. The goal was to provide a simple, cheap and good device that could withstand all the hardships of school life. Previous telescope systems were complex, expensive, and required very careful handling. All attempts to simplify and reduce the cost of the design led to a deterioration in optical quality. Maksutov never managed to “combine the incompatible.”

“The meniscus systems,” says the inventor in the book “Astronomical Optics,” “were invented by me in early August 1941, somewhere on the way between Murom and Arzamas during the evacuation from Leningrad.

Leaving Leningrad, and with it the mass production of school telescopes that was being prepared, the implementation of which I spent half my life with dubious success, I thought about the sad fate of my brainchild. A busy person rarely has the opportunity to do nothing for two weeks and fantasize about topics that interest him.

Is everything good in the developed design of the school reflector? No, not everything is good, in particular the mirrors, even if aluminized, will quickly fail. A reflector with an open pipe is unlikely to last long in a school. It is enough for the cleaning lady to wipe the dust off the mirror once, and it will be ruined. Cover the pipe with glass? This will, of course, protect the mirror. But what is glass made from? Plain glass is cheap, but it absorbs a lot of light. Optical glass is good, but its cost is high.”

“How can we improve the design? - the inventor continued to think. “The only way out, it seemed, was to complicate the design by placing a plane-parallel protective window in the front part of the pipe. The introduction of a plane-parallel window made of optical glass will significantly increase the cost of the instrument...”

The inventor thought about all this for many years. And each time I stopped before the obvious fact: simple glass is not suitable, and optical glass is too expensive. But on the train, Maksutov, as he himself emphasizes, was “fantasizing.” In other words, he could move away from the “vector of inertia”: test options that were considered obviously unprofitable, arbitrarily allow something fantastic. And he mentally made the following assumption: suppose that optical glass suddenly became very cheap, then it would immediately be possible to install protective windows on the reflectors. What will it give? First of all, the life of the mirror will be extended.

“The hermetic pipe is also nice in that it eliminates convection air currents.

The thought goes further and finds another advantage of a telescope with a protective window: you can attach a diagonal mirror to the window by, for example, drilling a hole in the window, passing the tail of the diagonal mirror frame through it, and then bolting this assembly to the protective window. We are freed from stands or stretch marks that absorb light and create additional interference.”

Here Maksutov takes the first step towards invention. Optical glass is something of a necessary evil. Okay, says the inventor, let there be optical glass! But, since you have to use it, isn’t it possible to get, as a kind of compensation, some additional benefits?

It was enough to pose the question in such a way that not only a specialist, but in general every person familiar with the structure of the telescope, would give the correct answer. A flat mirror is fixed near the inlet of the pipe, directing the reflector rays into the eye of the observer. Previously, the mounting system absorbed a lot of light, but now this mirror (also called a secondary mirror) can be attached directly to the protective window.

Here, not only does the mounting of the secondary mirror become easier, but the mirror itself essentially disappears. The function of the secondary mirror will be performed “part-time” by the central part of the protective window.

“This design is very good (the frame of the secondary mirror has disappeared, shielding has become minimal), but will the meniscus introduce harmful aberrations? Apparently, it will introduce (not achromatic, but spherical aberration, both positive and negative).

And here I almost missed an important discovery, reasoning that in this case it is possible to calculate a meniscus that does not introduce aberrations, i.e., an aberration-free meniscus.”

Read these lines carefully. The inventor had to overcome two barriers. The first barrier is that the protective glass must be made of expensive optical glass. It turned out that the increase in price can be compensated for: the cost of optical glass is recouped by the fact that the protective window will perform not one, but several functions. This means that you don’t have to jump over the barrier, you can bypass it...

But then the inventor came to the second barrier: it was necessary to eliminate the distortions created by the meniscus. It seemed that the newly discovered method of compensation would be applied here. Let aberration be another necessary evil. We must compensate for this evil, extract some benefit from it, and not eliminate it!

However, this is where the weakness of the “trial and error” method manifested itself. At first glance, the samples appear to be chaotic. But in this chaos there is a system: tests are carried out along the line of least resistance. It is easiest to try in the usual direction, and the inventor, without noticing it, goes where the road is more well-trodden (and where, therefore, it is unlikely that something new can be found). Attempts to jump over the barrier are renewed, although just a few minutes before it was revealed that it was possible not to jump, but to go around...

“I lingered on these thoughts,” continues Maksutov, “for several hours until I realized that it would be much more profitable to choose a meniscus that introduces a positive aberration into the system, capable of compensating for the negative aberration of a spherical mirror or spherical mirrors.

It was at this point that the meniscal systems were invented.”

Thus, the second barrier was overcome by the same compensation method. The meniscus distorts the light flux, and the inventor realized that there was no need to fight this. It is more profitable to use the distortions created by the meniscus to eliminate other distortions caused by errors in the manufacture of the main mirror of the telescope - the reflector.

Making a parabolic reflector is an extremely complex and time-consuming job. Maksutov's invention made it possible to replace parabolic reflectors with spherical mirrors that were immeasurably easier to manufacture. Previously, spherical mirrors could not be used because they create very large distortions. Now it is possible to compensate for reflector distortions with distortions created by the meniscus. An imperfect (in the optical sense) reflector and an imperfect meniscus, working in tandem, produced a completely perfect optical system!

Maksutov writes:

“Working on the theory of meniscus systems and seeing their advantages, you involuntarily remember the thorny path of the history of optical instrumentation. How many spears were broken in the struggle between supporters of the reflector and the refractor! How much energy was spent, on the one hand, on mastering the technique of manufacturing and studying precise aspherical surfaces, and on the other hand, on solving the problem of achromatic glasses! How much flint glass and other labor-intensive types of glass have been made for those cases in which they could not be used! Finally, how many expensive, bulky and imperfect telescopes have been built with equally expensive and bulky mechanical equipment and expensive premises with huge rotating domes!

If at the dawn of astronomical optics the elementary simple principle of meniscus systems, basically accessible to the understanding of the contemporaries of Descartes and Newton, had been known, then astronomical optics could have taken a completely different path and had achromatic short-focus optics with spherical surfaces, based only on a single type of optical glass, it doesn’t matter with what constants.”

So, the invention of paramount importance this time was 250-300 years late!

What is his future fate?

Having built a meniscus telescope, Maksutov used the idea he found to design meniscus microscopes, binoculars and other optical instruments. But even in optics, Maksutov’s idea was applied only to solving problems that were exactly two pods similar to the original one. If the problem turned out to be somewhat different, it was not solved at all, or it was solved by retracing the entire path that Maksutov had taken in his time.

Here is the story of one of these inventions. Please note that the line of reasoning and the resulting solution are strikingly reminiscent of the history of the invention of the meniscus telescope.

“The idea came about by chance. I knew one person - he was also an amateur submariner and wore glasses for many years. And under water?.. I advised him to make a mask out of plexiglass and mill out lenses on it that match the glasses. The idea was tempting, but not everyone can afford it.

And suddenly it turned out that the solution to the problem was in... water. If you make the plane-parallel glass of the mask convex, then the boundary of the two media - water and air - will be concave for the observer, scattering rays of light, like concave glasses of glasses. The athlete I mentioned had glasses with minus 2-3 diopters. As our experiments have shown, this is equivalent to the glass of a mask with a convex radius of 15-10 cm. That’s when I realized that it’s not about the glasses at all. After all, under water, distant objects are seen distortedly: larger and closer. But if we make the radius of the convexity of the mask 20-25 cm, the magnification transmitted by water will disappear, the underwater world will appear before us life-size and much more clearly.”

Like Maksutov, the inventor began with the idea that it was necessary to remove the extra “mounting system” and attach the lenses to the mask’s porthole. Then a guess came: it would be easier to do without glasses altogether by making the windows convex, that is, turning them into a meniscus. But the meniscus can be used “part-time” to eliminate distortions that are inevitable when observing through a flat mask window. This is how a new technical idea was formulated. Its significance is very great, because a diver’s labor productivity largely depends on visibility conditions.

The most valuable thing in Maksutov’s invention is the idea of ​​allowing the unacceptable and then compensating for it. We can safely say that among the many problems that have not been solved by modern technology, there are also those that could be solved using the “compensation method.” However, this method is not known to many people. Meniscus telescopes have been described hundreds of times, but there is not a single work that would say: here is a successful tactic for solving a wide variety of inventive problems, use it not only in optics, but also in other branches of technology...

So far we have talked about inventors who solved problems alone. Maybe in large groups the situation is different. Maybe there is a more effective creative technology out there?

Let's listen to what General Aviation Designer Oleg Konstantinovich Antonov says:

“When the Antaeus was being designed, the issue of the plumage design was especially difficult. A simple high fin with a horizontal tail at the top, despite all the clarity and tempting of this design recommended by aerodynamicists, was impossible to do - a high vertical tail would twist the fuselage of the aircraft, which had a huge cutout for a cargo hatch 4.4 meters wide and 17 meters long, like a paper bag. .

It was also impossible to separate the vertical tail and hang “washers” at the ends of the stabilizer, since this sharply reduced the critical flutter speed of the tail.

Time passed, but the plumage pattern was not found.”

A modern aviation design bureau is a team that systematically works according to a general program. The general designer does not think about the task alone. Each component of the aircraft is handled by a group of talented designers who have the latest information about everything that relates to their specialty. But if one such group stops, it disrupts the rhythm of work of the entire team. It is not difficult to imagine what is behind the simple phrase: “Time passed, but the plumage pattern was not found.”

“...One day, waking up at night,” continues O. Antonov, “I began, out of habit, to think about the main thing, about what cared and worried me most. If the halves of the tail “washers”, placed on the horizontal tail, cause flutter with their mass, then the “washers” must be positioned so that their mass from a negative factor becomes a positive one... This means that they must be pushed out strongly and placed in front of the rigidity axis of the horizontal tail. ..

How simple!

I immediately reached out to the night table, felt for a pencil and a notebook, and in complete darkness sketched out the diagram I found. Feeling great relief, I immediately fell fast asleep.”

Please note: at first Antonov, like Maksutov, tried unsuccessfully to remove the harmful factor. For Maksutov, the harmful factor was aberration, for Antonov it was mass. But the solution turned out to be the same: we must not remove the harmful factor, but make it useful.

Perhaps today some design bureau is again trying to eliminate some harmful factor. They hit the wall again. And next to it is an open door...

Now it is not difficult to answer the question posed at the beginning of the chapter. An invention methodology is needed: so that inventive tasks do not “stand idle” and come to the attention of inventors in a timely manner;

so that inventive problems are solved with the highest possible efficiency;

Making hay To make high-quality hay, grass must be mowed at strictly defined phases of the growing season. Mowing plants on natural forage lands at the beginning of flowering, when the largest amount of forage and nutrients accumulates in them