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: Old guitar strings--actually Leigh's comments



oddiyies I meant it. *I* was unaware of the bullet business until John
Mallinckrodt made me question it, which I did. I now know something I
didn't know before, which gives John a bit of well deserved
satisfaction. I get my jollies out of perforating the pomposities of
pretentious physicists*, even if I have to burst my own balloon
occasionally.

Leigh

....would it be appropriate to assume you therefore have been over-reaching
your own competence to have taught projectile motion before your latest
insight gained at the hands of the great M? Clearly you did not have a
"full" understanding of the problem; did you every teach about it thus
unprepared? Perhaps the great one should certify us all...

Dan M (with tongue in cheek, sort of)


*Does it count 4 for alliteration if I use "physicist"?

Physicists are usually ignorant of such real world oddities as these.
That is the kind of ignorance which leads to interactions that annoy the
man in the street (who may be knowledgeable in some art or craft). An
example came up recently when a teacher overreached his competence in
suggesting that bullets dropped vertically and fired horizontally fall
at the same rate. People with knowledge of small arms ballistics (many
of whom never take standard physics courses) know that is untrue. The
disease even manifests itself more dramatically when physicists try to
put other fields, some of which are doing nicely already, on a "proper
scientific" foundation. An example is the introduction of "scientific
pitch" based on a middle C frequency of 256 Hz to make calculations
easier for even tone-deaf physicists!

Leigh