I hadn’t considered my iPhone a “bionic extension” until I used my iPhone’s camera to solve a problem by doing something I couldn’t do with my body.

This summer, in the course of painting the dining room, I had to take down curtains. Removing the curtains and rods was easy. Removing the fixture which held the rods was not.

The fixture had no visible screws or points of attachment. The space between it and the ceiling was smaller than my head, so I couldn’t see down from the top. I could feel an opening at the top, so I was pretty sure this held the clue to how these worked.

I was very lucky to have a flash of inspiration and realize that I had a camera in my pocket. My iPhone could certainly fit into the space between the ceiling and the fixture. Armed with this photo, I was able to solve my problem:

The fixture had screws which slid along a track on the wall. Once I pushed up on the fixture, those screws cleared the track, and I was able to pull the fixture off the wall with ease.

I tend to think of the iPhone as a communication and computing device, so sometimes I forget that it operates within the physical world. Better yet, it can do so in ways that I cannot.

It felt incredibly rewarding to use my iPhone to solve this particular problem. I hope the next time I’m faced with something similar that my iPhone comes to mind.