Bilkent News Picture Challenge
I Know Where You've Been This Week

BY TULYA KAVAKLIOĞLU (MBG/IV)

Hello everyone! I can finally hear your voices saying The Picture Challenge is no longer easy. From now on, you will need to look much carefully to the places you have been. But I cannot say that you will need to walk more every time, because as you see, for the last couple of weeks as the weather got colder, I preferred indoor scenes.

Last week's answer is the ceiling of main campus library. I bet you have been there countless times but you never turned your head up and saw those circular shaped windows. However, if you are one of the people who sent a right answer last week, that means you did see the windows. You have a good eye, and you should keep following this little corner because you know, there is a chance to win.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if a fire was started in the library, how people would save tons of books from burning? It is obvious that if we really want to save those books, we cannot use water or any other liquid to end the fire because otherwise the books will be destroyed. This week I learned that there is an interesting system in the library to suck the oxygen up when there is a fire alarm. No oxygen, no fire. The alarm is turned on automatically if anything passes between the two sensors looking each other all the time. That's why they are called lovers' eyes. If the alarm is not turned off manually, the system starts to suck the oxygen and produces an orange-smelling odor as a signal so that when someone realizes the smell, the building is evacuated immediately. That is an interesting choice to signal an emergency because it can easily be mistaken as a room perfume, which was the case in a past incident.

So the story goes, late at one night the fire alarm system went off without any sign of a fire, but no one managed to turn the system off because the system stops giving a signal and starts to suck oxygen silently, producing an orange odor in turn. The next day, when students went to that area of the library and realized the smell, they asked each other why the administration doesn't use in the same scent in dormitories, because it smelled so nice! At the same time, luckily, a security guard also reported the smell so that the false alarm was then turned off. After an investigation, it then turns out that the lovers' eyes were disconnected because a few naughty mice ate the cables.

Prizes will be: The first two correct answers win coffee from Coffee Break.

The 15th correct answer wins lunch for one from Le Piment Rouge. iletisim@bilkent.edu.tr