The World Unites in Support of Danny Nickerson

Posted on by Jim Patterson

July 25, 2014 marks the date of 6-year-old Danny Nickerson, of Foxboro Massachusetts’, birthday. Danny is a 6-year old with an inoperable brain tumor. His only wish this year was to receive birthday cards on his special day. The Huffington Post wrote an article about Danny & it went viral. Random people, strangers actually, have displayed ‘random’ acts of kindness towards Danny and his wishes. How? They sent him snail mail. Each and every day Danny would go to the PO Box that his parents set up for him & was astonished by the overwhelming flood of mail & love received by complete strangers from all over the world; California, Alaska, Australia, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Norway & Sweden to name a few. Static Clean International, Inc. of Burlington, MA was one of those strangers. Danny has received over 15,000 snail mail birthday cards and still counting.

Word reached Patriots owner, Bob Kraft and he invited Danny and his family to the Patriots training camp this past Friday.  The team had a few surprises up their sleeves including all getting together at midfield to sing Danny happy birthday and present him with a very large birthday card signed by all the players.  Danny who is quite shy, sat there grinning from ear to ear as the Pats sang “Happy Birthday”.  It was a truly special moment for him and his family.

You’re probably wondering what snail mail for Danny and static have in common, right? Have you ever opened snail mail or an envelope or pulled sticky tape off of a surface and seen a flash of light? There is a name for this – triboluminescence; or in other words – a piezoelectric effect. When piezoelectric materials, like sticky or self-adhesive envelopes, are stretched – they generate electricity. When you rip an envelope open – the distribution of positive and negative charges across the envelope may become uneven. When the charges clump in one area – and are either highly positive or highly negative – and you continue to rip open the envelope, the electricity ignites the atoms in the glue & the energy created is released as light.

Not many people would try and solve a static on snail mail problem. However, if you were trying to control the piezoelectric effect from occurring – you may considering our Piezonizer ZAPP II nozzle. It’s a compact AC ionizer with an ultra-small built-in piezoelectric transformer. The excellent ion balance and fast static decay rates make this the ideal choice nozzle to reduce static elimination when space is at a premium.

Sources: http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=894.0

Written by: Julianne Patterson – julianne@staticclean.com

Every Opportunity is an Opportunity

Posted on by Jim Patterson

Sir Winston Churchill, as Prime Minister of Britain was faced with the daunting task of leading his country from the brink of defeat to victory. He is noted for many quotes and speeches around 1940 including “Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat, and “We Will Fight on the Beaches” but none is more famous than the “This Was Their Finest Hour” speech to the House of Commons on June 16, 1940 just one month after he became Prime Minister. He is also credited with the following quote along with many others.

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”  -Winston Churchill

Is your glass half-full?

Another way of describing people’s attitude in life is the difference between the glass is half empty full vs. the glass is half empty. Churchill, born in 1874 had a good genetic combination that made him the right choice to lead the United Kingdom at a very difficult time in history, especially with Europe under siege by Hitler’s forces. He was a military man who had a British statesman father and a New York born, independent thinking, socialite mother. This combination brought him to the forefront as the right man at the right time in history for not only the British people, but for Europe and the world.

In business, we all want to be optimist and not dwell on the things that are wrong or business that we lost to China or more to the point, complaining about things out of our control. We need to focus on the positive and what we do well to be competitive in the Global Economy. If Churchill hadn’t maintained a healthy attitude and rallied the troops to save his county, what do you think the end result would have been? The landscape of Europe would look much different today. President Roosevelt and Churchill though very much different in so many ways, found a way to work together. Many people believe that the government work programs of the New Deal was the key to our vital economy and getting out of the Great Depression, but it was more about the destruction of the infrastructure in of so many countries including Europe and Japan that made America the strongest economy in the world.

Attitude is everything

The United States with its raw materials and a ready and willing; post- war workforce was up for the challenge. By 1944, the unemployment rate in the US was 1.2%, still the lowest in American history. Even with our military personnel returning from the war, the unemployment rate stayed under 4% throughout the 1940’s. You can see why panic sets in when the US unemployment rate get above 8%. The population of the US in 1944 was less than 140 million people and in 2014, it is 317 million. The math shows a clear picture of our country moving in the wrong direction. How do we turn things around? I asked a very liberal friend the other day a simple question. If you had to pay $10.00 more for a pair of sneakers made in the USA instead of a plant in Asia, would you? His answer was absolutely not and he justified it by saying that it was his job to get the best price possible. If we had a level playing field it might be different, but the US tax burden and regulatory compliance means higher costs to produce goods. Notwithstanding the attitude of my misguided friend, there is a huge under swell of buy American sentiment going on and many companies that went to China are moving manufacturing back to the States. We won’t get it all back, but we will see better days ahead. The bright spot in our manufacturing sector is Medical Device Manufacturing and Static Clean with its key products such as Hepa-Clean Chambers and Medical Cleaning Stations is seeing the benefits from every opportunity presented. Visit us at Static Clean for information on our products. Our hope is for more Americans to think globally, but act locally and hasten the return of American entrepreneurship.