This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Looney Toons: Moved the following out of the main entry to here, because it's more discussion than trope.
In real life, you'd be surprised how often programmers get their code to work by changing a plus to a minus or a times to a divide.
// Yes, but that's because they typed it in wrong in the first place, not because it was designed to work with plus and switching to minus has an amazing secondary effect.
// That said, there are some programming models where procedures can be run backwards with interesting effect, such as a sorting algorithm becoming a random sequence generator.
Kizor: Amusingly, this was a very real part of Edison's Conquest of Mars (1898) (yes), where spaceflight was accomplished by generating and amplifying a huge electromagnetic charge in your ship that is then repulsed by that of the planet it's on. Flip the polarity on that, and the ship does a 180.
Ununnilium: You should add that.
Randallw: in that Drone example of Voyager what I believe happened was that the Borg reacted with a feedback pulse. I'm no scientist but it makes sense to me. The Phasers create an energy connection between the ships. The feedback pulse just travels along the connection and burns out the Phasers.
Elyscape: Please ignore the edits I made to this article earlier. I had a brainfart and got confused about stuff.
Fast Eddie: Oh! You pulled a Fast Eddie. Happens to the best of us. ;-)
I was thinking of mentioning Laputa, from Gulliver's Travels: Laputa is a flying island powered by a magnetic loadstone, if you accept that you can make an island fly by magnetically repelling the earth (as if) then the Laputan's frequent polarity reversals make scientific sense. In at least one adaption the island was attacked with a giant magnet that pulled it down, they escaped by reversing the polarity. Since this has nothing to do with technobabel I'm not sure its relivent or not, but it could be a nice subversion that predates the troupe
Freezer: This troper maintains daytime running lights to be THE most useless automotive "innovation" since gas went unleaded (There were probably dumber ones in the 50s and 60s).
Daibhid C: I'm sure I recall reading a comic where the Smart Guy on the team explains he has to reverse the polarity of something and then lampshades the trope by saying "Reverse the polarity... Next time just shoot me." I think it was Atom (Ray Palmer) in an issue of JLA, but I'm not sure. Anyone else remember it?
Sabbo: This example is staying here until someone can tell me why it's justified.
- A rare justified example, on Stargate SG 1: Sam Carter is working on the Naquadah generator and it just won't work. "Oh- Reverse the polarity!"
