How It Ticks

How things work, taken apart

A small museum of how things work. Each exhibit is a model you can slide, press and drag, from a lock you pick with your finger to the number chatbots name most often. Every number on these pages comes from a primary source or from a run I did myself.

Drag the big wheel. Once a second the anchor lets the escape wheel move half a tooth: that is the tick.

Around the house

Machines you live with and never open.

  • Exhibit 14Frigo trimixte : comment il marche et pourquoi il ne fait plus de froidOctober 21, 2026, in FrenchPlus de froid au gaz, en 12 V ou en 230 V ? Les codes E07 à E50 de Dometic, pourquoi un frigo trimixte doit être à plat et pourquoi il peine au-delà de 32 °C.
  • Exhibit 12How does a refrigerator work?October 19, 2026A kitchen fridge and a gas RV fridge cut open side by side. Let heat in, tilt the RV one past its limit, and find out which dial number is coldest.
  • Exhibit 11Pourquoi mon détecteur de fumée bipe ?October 18, 2026, in FrenchBip toutes les 30, 40 ou 60 secondes, 3 bips, bip malgré une pile neuve : ce que veut dire le signal chez Kidde, Lifebox et FireAngel, guide à l’appui.
  • Exhibit 10Warum piept mein Rauchmelder?October 17, 2026, in GermanRauchmelder piept alle 30 Sekunden? Bei Ei sind es 32, bei ABUS 40, bei Hekatron 48. Marke und Ton wählen, die Bedeutung steht mit Satz aus der Anleitung.
  • Exhibit 9How does a smoke detector work?October 15, 2026Fill an ionization chamber and a photoelectric one with smoke and see what each reacts to. Then pick the chirp you hear and read what it means.
  • Exhibit 8How does a toilet work?October 13, 2026Flush a toilet tank cut in half, then break the float, the flapper or the chain and see how many liters a day each fault costs.
  • Exhibit 6How does a microwave work?October 12, 2026Look down into a microwave oven and see where the standing waves leave hot and cold spots. Then start the turntable and watch the spots smear into rings.
  • Exhibit 3How does a lock work?October 11, 2026Slide a key into a lock cut in half and watch five pin stacks line up at the shear line. Then try a wrong key, and pick the lock with no key at all.

Digital

How a screen, a code or a network does its job.

  • Exhibit 13Wi-Fi QR code generatorOctober 20, 2026Type your network name and password, get a code guests scan to join. Built in your browser, the password goes nowhere. Shows what Android reads and what the Wi-Fi spec says.
  • Exhibit 7QR code checkerOctober 13, 2026Open a photo or screenshot of a QR code and read the address before your phone opens it, with the part that decides whose site it is in bold. Nothing is uploaded.
  • Exhibit 5How do QR codes work?October 11, 2026Cover a real QR code with your finger and it still scans: the phone rebuilds the hidden squares from spare data. Slide onto a corner square and a camera may not find it at all.
  • Exhibit 4QR code generatorOctober 11, 2026Type a link and get a plain QR code: the link sits in the pattern itself, so it never expires and nobody counts the scans. No account. SVG or PNG.

Artificial intelligence

What language models do with your words, measured.

  • Exhibit 2How many tokens is a word?October 10, 2026About 1.3 tokens per English word in ChatGPT. Paste your own text into the counter, then see the same document in 23 languages: Greek costs more than twice as much as English.
  • Exhibit 1Why ChatGPT keeps picking 17October 10, 2026I asked AI models for a random number 2,773 times. From 1 to 30 they say 17; ask for another in the same chat and they say 23.

Next in the workshop: how a toilet cistern fills itself, stops on its own, and empties in one go.