How does a rubber do it so well?

[marmaduke]

How do pencil erasers take pencil marks off the paper so well? They are astonishing.

[rojash]

Inside the eraser are two pixies. As you drag it over the pencil lines, one of them mops them with solvent while the other dries them using paper towels and a teeny tiny hairdrier. This is why if you listen carefully while you are rubbing, you will hear a sort of shhk,-shk noise. Originally the pixies were slaves forced into the job by evil capitalist rubber plantation owners, but nowadays they are usually husband and wife teams who do it as a means of seeing the world on the cheap.

[Potatoman]

rojash, your answer has cracked me up! The funniest thing iv seen in ages! nice one!

[marmaduke]

Funny as it may have been (to a drunk), I don't think it's the right answer.

[brachiopod]

marmaduke, how can you find the use of a pencil eraser "astonishing" ?

Tcchh ! Kids today! A pencil was all we were allowed to write with up until the age of thirteen, when we graduated to a fountain pen.

Now I'm a big boy, they let me write with a green wax crayon, as they don't allow sharp objects in this place.

[landie]

Bloody hell, I've doone this wrang. How do dou get tippex off a monitor screen?

[amarillis]

Well, a pencil works by leaving tiny graphite flakes on the paper, which we see as a black or grey line. An eraser is a soft rubber abrasive, which scrubs the top layer of paper and removes a little of paper together with graphite particles. Clumps of used rubber, mixed with paper and graphite are produced. If you keep erasing you will eventually wear a hole in the paper.

[rojash]

" If you keep erasing you will eventually wear a hole in the paper."

Or worse, you will wear a hole in the eraser and the pixies will fall out.

[Potatoman]

Rojash, youve done it again, m8!! :-)))

[ianess]

It's amazing the trouble you can avoid by using a rubber!!!!!!

[marmaduke]

So nobody knows then, except perhaps amarillis.