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Re: Simple Machines - May They Rise Again!



Ten years ago my son invited his best friend from college, a mechanical
engineering honors student, to visit us here at Deer Lake. While he was
here I had to uproot some overgrown shrubery (ornamental cedars) from
our yard. I did this with a chain-drive comealong. Our guest was
fascinated; he had never seen such a thing, nor had he ever seen a
differential hoist. I explained how the thing worked, which he fully
understood, but the greatest benefit he got (in a professional way)
from the visit came when I allowed him to pull one of the trees
himself. (This was not a Tom Sawyer whitewash job. Given the proper
tool it is very easy to do.)

A couple of our faculty members here were raised on farms. I have
always known that they had excellent experiences in their backgrounds
with respect to machinery. We should try to give our urban students
some of the same experiences. When I was growing up in the wilderness
(in LA, near Culver City) I did work on cars; my dad taught me much
about them. I was also a ham, and I built transmitters from scratch,
though I never built a receiver from scratch. Kids come to me in
university without these experiences in their backgrounds. Sure, they
often know C++ and maybe Java, but those skills amount to little when
one applies them to physics.

Leigh