Re: squash ball question

["Dewey Dykstra, Jr." <dykstrad@EMAIL.BOISESTATE.EDU>]

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> You're quite right, Karl. And that fact brings to mind a couple of
> questions I've always had about Brother Fermi's feat.
> 1. Did they not do an environmental impact study before they built that
> pile? I'm talking about a major potential impact such as blowing up the
> entire campus or at least painting the stadium with ionizing radiation.
> 2. Had all the squash players gone off to war? If not, where did they
> recreate themselves after Enrico's boys stole their court?
>
> Paul O. Johnson
> Collin County College

Actually the plot gets thicker (there's another atomic pile connection) and
has "another" U of Tx-Austin connection.  u of Chicago used to have a
football team and an extremely large base drum.  It had to be pulled around
on a wagon by a small tractor or several people.  During the war or maybe
just before U of Chicago stopped fielding the football team and put the
drum in storage under the stadium.  (Those squash players must have had
pretty cramped quarters if they were playing under the stadium then.)  The
story goes that the drum was irradiated and hence had to be quaranteened.
When it had  cooled off, U of Chicago had a ready customer for the big drum
at UTx-Austin since Texas generally prides itself as having the biggest of
everything.

Leastwise that's what I was told while a grad student at Texas.

Dewey


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Dewey I. Dykstra, Jr.                 Phone: (208)426-3105
Professor of Physics                  Dept:  (208)426-3775
Department of Physics/MCF421/418      Fax: (208)426-4330
Boise State University            dykstrad@email.boisestate.edu
1910 University Drive                 Boise Highlanders
Boise, ID 83725-1570                  novice piper: GHB, Uilleann

"As a result of modern research in physics, the ambition and hope,
still cherished by most authorities of the last century, that physical
science could offer a photographic picture and true image of reality
had to be abandoned."  --M. Jammer in Concepts of Force, 1957.

"If what we regard as real depends on our theory, how can we make
reality the basis of our philosophy? ...But we cannot distinguish
what is real about the universe without a theory...it makes no sense
to ask if it corresponds to reality, because we do not know what
reality is independent of a theory."--S. Hawking in Black Holes
and Baby Universes, 1993.
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