Still life with shuttlecock

The simplicity of the shuttlecock is its genius.

Its design seems the antithesis of rocket science, and, yet, it shares the same basic shape with the cone atop a rocket and the nose of an airplane. The shuttlecock is aerodynamics stripped of the calculations and equations. It is physics by instinct and inspired by play.

A shuttlecock, at least in its original form, is a piece of cork adorned with splayed feathers (preferably those from the left wing of a goose, if random Internet research is to be trusted). And yet from such a simple concept arises perfection.

Consider the flight of the shuttlecock. It is tossed into the air and struck by a racket. The feathers regulate the erratic course of the cork, and the weight of the cork guarantees it always will be at the point of impact with the badminton racket. It never changes. It can’t.

Do not mistake me for a shuttlecock scholar. I’ve played no more than 20 minutes of badminton. But you don’t have to play the game to appreciate how something so simple works so well.

Seriously, have you ever hit a shuttlecock? You cannot hit it the wrong way. No matter how athletically challenged, you always will strike the cork, never the feathers.

I have no idea who invented it. The Shuttlecock Federation of Europe traces the shuttlecock’s origins back to the 5th century B.C. in China, and that’s where the trail grows cold.

But identifying an inventor is unnecessary. Some things just are, as if nature, not man, forced them to the top of human consciousness

Who invented the boat? Someone centuries ago who saw a piece of wood floating in the water.

Who invented the wood floor? Someone a long time ago who grew tired of walking on dirt.

The true genius of those taken-for-granted items isn’t in what they do; it is that, across the ages, they still exist in more or less the same form.

In Peshtigo, a company called Aacer Flooring makes sports floors from wood. Aacer people make floors the way floors always have been made: They cut down a tree and form the wood.

Certainly Aacer floors’ look, feel and durability are different from their predecessors’, but the concept is the same, the purpose never changed.

And it is by embracing such simplicity that Aacer finds itself on the cusp of world recognition.

When the 2008 Summer Olympics convene in Beijing, and the Olympic badminton competitors begin their quest for the gold, they will do so on an Aacer floor.

And as that shuttlecock traces its flawless arc over the net, it will be reflected in the high-gloss, modern shine of a good, old-fashioned wood floor, proof that sometimes simple is exactly right, proof that sometimes, two models of such simplicity can coincide beautifully.