Walter, as usual I was impressed with your essay. I was along for the ride with the falling mice and horses. However, when you got to your actual experiments and the dreaded math (for me, of course) I had the feeling of being lost in that Borneo forest. Seeking a comparison between making sense of the marvelous math and physics in your essay and my comprehension, I came up with this: I just checked out of the library The Brothers Karamazov, in English. If, however, I attempted to read in Russian (old or contemporary) I would have similar comprehension. As I have lamented to you before, I wish the hell I had paid attention in high school rather than dreaming of hot rods and girls and not in that order. Steve
It's never too late.... well, actually, it is too late to dream of girls and hot rods. But then again, both hot rods and girls involved quite a bit of math, and I can't imagine that you didn't know it. Just sayin'.
Where is the assurance that “no animals were harmed the making of this experiment.” Maybe we need an essay on "how to gather dead ants for experiments", or "how to scrape dead ants off your shoes", or "efficient means of collecting experimental subjects without contaminating the remains with dog shit".”
Lots of possibilities. And, I LOVED THIS!!! just like the explanation of why the little pucks slide easily along the surface of the bowling pinball game. Backwoods of California.
I absolutely loved this exposition!! Everybody should read how a real scientist and premier experimentalist works and reasons.
I wonder if experimenters at NASA set up tests of fall rates in the Martian atmosphere to calculate just how many airbags (with known pound per square inch bursting limits per bag) would be required to make safe, low speed landings for delicate payloads? Maybe they just used those engineering manuals with all the tables, but I doubt it.
I don't know about Martian atmospheres, but NASA runs a whole bunch of wind tunnels for testing how objects behave when moving through the atmosphere at various speeds. Same principle as my flow meter.
Walter, as usual I was impressed with your essay. I was along for the ride with the falling mice and horses. However, when you got to your actual experiments and the dreaded math (for me, of course) I had the feeling of being lost in that Borneo forest. Seeking a comparison between making sense of the marvelous math and physics in your essay and my comprehension, I came up with this: I just checked out of the library The Brothers Karamazov, in English. If, however, I attempted to read in Russian (old or contemporary) I would have similar comprehension. As I have lamented to you before, I wish the hell I had paid attention in high school rather than dreaming of hot rods and girls and not in that order. Steve
It's never too late.... well, actually, it is too late to dream of girls and hot rods. But then again, both hot rods and girls involved quite a bit of math, and I can't imagine that you didn't know it. Just sayin'.
Where is the assurance that “no animals were harmed the making of this experiment.” Maybe we need an essay on "how to gather dead ants for experiments", or "how to scrape dead ants off your shoes", or "efficient means of collecting experimental subjects without contaminating the remains with dog shit".”
Lots of possibilities. And, I LOVED THIS!!! just like the explanation of why the little pucks slide easily along the surface of the bowling pinball game. Backwoods of California.
I absolutely loved this exposition!! Everybody should read how a real scientist and premier experimentalist works and reasons.
I wonder if experimenters at NASA set up tests of fall rates in the Martian atmosphere to calculate just how many airbags (with known pound per square inch bursting limits per bag) would be required to make safe, low speed landings for delicate payloads? Maybe they just used those engineering manuals with all the tables, but I doubt it.
I don't know about Martian atmospheres, but NASA runs a whole bunch of wind tunnels for testing how objects behave when moving through the atmosphere at various speeds. Same principle as my flow meter.
They probably spent a half billion on their supersized version of yours!