by keck314 » 12 Apr 2004 3:40
Hi all,
I'm a student at an east-coast college that shall remain nameless, and just tonight, had the following extremely odd sequence of events happen to me. I apologize in advance for the length, but the whole thing is really odd.
My friends and I were all hanging out in the science building working on a big paper when we realized that we had neglected to measure a crucial quantity in our experiment, without which our entire project was essentially doomed. We absolutely had to determine this constant, but the lab containing the equipment we needed was firmly locked. As physics majors, we have keys to almost every lab in the building, but that particular one contains some VERY expensive equipment, and so was off-limits to undergraduates outside of normal operating hours.
Since the paper was due at 8:00 the very next day, waiting until morning to ask a faculty member for access was not an option. We tried to think of something, anything, that would save us, but our options seemed relatively closed. We resolved to finish the paper to the best of our ability without the addidional measurement, and accept the grade we got.
By this time (~3:00 a.m.) I had finished my portion of the paper, so I decided to go up to the door to the lab in question and contemplate our predicament. I had no prior lockpicking experience, and the 7-pin Best cores that are used in our building, though masterkeyed, were surely beyond my meager skills. Eventually though, I pulled out the small pocket screwdriver I keep with me, and, not expecting anything at all, inserted the tip about 1mm into the keyway. I applied a slight clockwise torque, and was emminently surprised when the cylinder emitted a small *click* and rotated about five degrees. The astonishing thing, however, came next.
As I withdrew my screwdriver from the keyway, it drew the core of the lock partway out of its housing along with it. I took hold of the protruding core with, and easily extracted the remainder with my bare hands. Panicked, I immediately reinserted the core, but then decided to see if my feat was repeatable, which it was. Eventually, as my comrades and I were standing around examining the hole in the doorhandle debating what do do next (we're rather close to graduation and have no desire to be expelled), a passing underclassman with far more guts than we offered to take our screwdriver and give it a try in the coreless lock. With a slight twist, he succeeded in opening the lab. We duly thanked him and measured our required constant, leaving the lab as we'd found it, and reinserting the core.
Once the paper was finished, we searched the building for other doors with this peculiar property, eventually finding one other example in the door to a professor's office. All other locks resisted our probing.
We assume that these two locks were simply poorly installed, but I was wondering if anyone here could shed light on exactly what lead to this fortuitous property. Is this a known issue with seven-pin Best cylinders? Why weren't any other doors affected? The locks on both affected doors work perfectly well as long as the core is in place, and they appear exactly the same as all others in the building. What's special about them that a ~5-degree counterclockwise rotation by an object barely even in the keyway allows the core to just slide out?
Thanks in advance for your help.
-A relieved (but perplexed!) physics student.
