I've never known what the inside of a catalytic converter looked like before. Admittedly, I had to replace my converter at one point and told the mechanic that I wanted to old one to take in to school and show my students - with some idea that I'd ask the old technology (shop) department to cut it in half for me long, long ago - but I eventually just threw the thing out without doing anything with it.
The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray when confronted with laziness, eh?
Clearly, the catalytic converter isn't lazy at all, however, and the technology used to keep the catalytic converter converting is insanely complicated.
The simple version is that the catalytic converter combusts any unburned hydrocarbon and nitrogen oxide byproducts from the combustion happening within the pistons every second of a car's functioning.
...but to make that secondary combustion take place efficiently requires a whole lot of oxygen sensing to and adjusting along the way of that car functioning.
