Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: floating a destroyer

That's The Gillespie St. English Speaking Society.

bc Who has, too often, attacks of CRS.

Bernard Cleyet wrote:

Zero is (also) a violation of the english language. (I know, everyone does it,
at least occasionally.) If there's no liquid, it's not floating; it's resting.
I suspect the English Speaking Society would object to one molecule thick, but
not all members of this list.

bc A member of the English Speaking Society, who would require the
thickness
be sufficient to be visible to the std. "Man."

Hugh Haskell wrote:

At 6:00 PM -0400 8/1/01, Hugh Haskell wrote:
As usual with these "factoids" on cereal boxes, or other boxes,
someone got the whole thing so bolixed up that it is hard to figure
out what they meant. But, by looking at the problem (entitled
"battleship in a bathtub" as I recall) in Epstein's book, one can
easily see that, in principle, there is no lower limit to the amount
of water needed to "float" a destroyer.

I posit that there are plenty of lower limits, the greatest of which is zero.

Larry

I'll agree that I used sloppy limit-language if you'll tell me how
you get negative quantities of water.

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
<mailto://haskell@ncssm.edu>
<mailto://hhaskell@mindspring.com>

(919) 467-7610

Let's face it. People use a Mac because they want to, Windows because they
have to..
******************************************************