Prof. Percival Thistlewaite
Chair, Applied Smallness
The world’s leading authority on doorknobs. Has never seen a specimen up close and has arranged his career so that he never will.
Parva Agere, Parva Aperire
Applied Smallness
Practical research into getting small things to do things. Current focus, as it has been since 1985, is doorknobs.
Overview
Applied Smallness was founded in 1781 to answer a simple question: once you have a very small man, what is he for? Two hundred years later, the department has narrowed that question to a more urgent one: what can he get into?
Our researchers design, build and test the everyday world at the scale of the humunculous: doors, stairs, drawers, the gap under the fridge. Our aim is to understand how a seven-inch person moves through a seventy-inch world, and, on a related note, how to stop him.
The department works closely with Jar Sciences and, increasingly, with the Office of Containment.
Faculty
Dr. Imelda Vance-Pettigrew
Senior Fellow, Stairs
Studies stair risers, ladder ethics and the question of who, exactly, the bottom shelf is for.
Mr. Oswin Pike
Instrument Technician
Builds the department’s tools at 1:12 scale. Has a suspiciously steady hand and very little to say about it.
Dr. Hal Brannock
Visiting Researcher (on leave)
On leave since March. Last seen in the staff kitchen, kneeling in front of the small door.
Current Research
The Doorknob Accessibility Initiative Year 41
Can a humunculous open a standard brass doorknob unaided? Early results said no. Recent results say yes, and that it is now somewhere else.
Miniature Stair Program Ongoing
A full-scale study of stairs at one-twelfth scale. The test staircase in Room 7b leads up to the skirting board and, in our observations, through it.
The Small Door Project Under review
A joint inquiry with Facilities into the small door in the staff kitchen. Facilities maintain that it is a cupboard. It is not a cupboard.
Button Pressing at Scale Paused
How hard must a small man push a lift button for the lift to come? Paused after the lift began coming on its own.
Findings
- A humunculous can open any doorknob, given enough time and enough resentment.
- Stairs are a matter of opinion.
- Tools built at 1:12 scale go missing at a rate of one every seven days. Nobody has signed any of them out.
- The small door in the staff kitchen leads somewhere. Where it leads is still under review.
Publications
Forthcoming, or lost:
- Toward a Unified Theory of the Small Door
- Doorknob Torque at Seven Inches: A Longitudinal Study
- On Reaching the Light Switch