Ring-a-Ring-a-Smokey!

Q: I'm very unpopular in my school, and get my face pounded into a wet, fleshy pulp every lunchtime. I'm already blind in one eye and can no longer lick ice-creams.

I figure the best solution is to take up smoking and learn how to blow smoke rings like the cool kids do. I just can't work out how to do it!

Help me Harv!


A: Being way too intelligent to ever take up smoking, I did not have the answer to your question at hand.

However, I don't like to leave a question unanswered on AskHarv, so I have been conducting experiments in my lab the past fortnight. I have been able to work out how to blow smoke rings, and it's not as difficult as you may think, once you know the trick.

Before you face your friends and attempt to impress them, you need to do a bit of preparation. You'll need:

• 1 elastic band
• 3 rolls of electrical tape
• 3.2 kms of copper wire
• 1 breathing apparatus (a regular rebreather would be fine)
• 2 18 ft tall steel pylons
• a lead shield, at least 19 inches thick
• 2 power sources capable of generating 1.21 gigawatts (a couple of small, modern power plants would do)

Simply relocate or construct the two power plants either side of your school, wrap the pylons in copper wire, fire up the power, and position yourself at a perfectly equidistant point between the two.

When you light up a cigarette at this location, you'll find the smoke is affected by the electromagnetic field to form all sorts of circular shapes, such as ovals, spheres, 4th-dimensional planes, and, of course, the ever-elusive rings you desire!

To impress your friends further, you'll find the trick also has a number of impressive side-effects, such as:

• Creating shimmering pockets of white light and unpredictable weather conditions
• Transporting objects and creatures from parallel dimensions to our world
• Completely disintegrating people's atoms in less than a nanosecond
• Opening unstable worm-holes, thus sending organic, sentient beings (well any that you haven't already disintegrated) careering randomly through space-time
  
• The smoke may also become self-aware and develop consciousness

A word of warning, though: you may find the electromagnets generate a lot of heat.