Norman Wootan wrote:
>
> Hi! Don: Please don't take this wrong but, here in Texas we have an
> old saying,
> "He has to have instructions on the heel to pour pi-- out of the
> boot."
I never take things the wrong way when I know they are meant with a
postive intention!
As for the above phrase, never heard it before but I think I get the
gist of it.
The fact of the matter is, I AM like that... quite often actually.
Sometimes
I NEED instructions on my heel or to be spoon fed... especially when it
comes
to ideas that stretch past known boundaries and delve into places not
generally
known about or understood.
I used to really p.o. teachers back in grade school...especially in math
class.
I think I was one of the only kids who ever asked the dreaded question,
'WHY'?
Why does it work that way? Why do we have to learn such and such?
Whats the point
of learning quadratic equations? I never once got a satisfactory
answer...instead
all my classmates would either roll their eyes or look at me with a
blank stare that
indicated they were thinking 'huh?' Teachers always tried to give me
some stock
answer about its important to know in case you ever get a job that
requires that knowledge...
'yeah, but why...' I'd say... and they'd cut me off by telling me to
JUST DO IT already
and get on with things. So the focus was on the how and what but not on
the why....
I found that I had a difficult time understanding certain areas of study
and unless
I could somehow view the concepts as objects or relationships either in
my head
or actually watch them happening, i.e. a note on my heel telling me to
pour the p*ss
out...
I found Garry's earlier message quite inspiring as he mentioned his
'way' of doing things...
by using inference, detecting patterns, using intuition, etc.... funny
thing thats is almost
EXACTLY the way I am too... I seem to intuit a problem... visualize or
feel my way around
it..into it or through it... then I can understand more deeply the words
or language
used to convey the concept...and of course math is a descriptive
language. I do not think
my way is the BEST way and in fact it often doesnt work as good as other
approaches in certain
situations.
But I can honestly say that I have sometimes surprised the hell out of
my self by suddenly
arriving into a situation where I have 'accidentally' solved a problem
that other
people many times my senior in education and experience didnt have a
clue about and whats
more they seemed rather upset or baffled that I had figured it out....
grin.
You see... you might describe a mathematical relationship to me... but
if I don't happen to know
all the particular buzzwords, jargon or terminology such as 'phase
conjugation' then I draw a blank
and feel like a fish out of water... but once I understand the concept
first and THEN a label
is attached to it...then I have no problem at all. Once I physically
saw a simple demonstration
of phase conjugation I totally understood the topic... I saw the
'why'... progressing from there
to descibing the relationship mathematically would be much easier for
me. I may be rather simple
in this respect...perhaps like 'Forrest Gump', but man... I sure have
ended up in the most interesting
places, doing such interesting things.... I have to wonder if I'm doing
something right sometimes.
Somehow I've ended up working for the head office with Microsoft... the
pay is pretty good and its relatively
nice here... I'm told I should be happy with my position here, havent
decided on that one yet,
but the odd thing is I don't know what the HECK I'm doing most of the
time... and I TOLD them that before
they hired me.... so I just sort of get by I suppose...kinda like Winnie
the Pooh...but everyone seems
real happy with what I'm doing, why I haven't the slightest.
Anyhow...sorry for this long winded and drawn out blurb. I guess I just
wanted to say that I really
respect your knowledge, experience and the fact that you try to help
people like me out on here...
to help us understand things better. I do, as I said earlier, think
that your way is better in this
scenario... to study the math related about this and really understand
it and then go try to build one...
and it might be a better way for me to go on this too... I'm totally
open minded on your suggestion...
I just know that in the past when I have been able to SEE some sort of
effect and touch the material
and feel the motion it makes and start to see it in my head...whirling
away, kachunking, making
odd noises and sounds...and I can visualize how the parts are working
together..then sometimes
it helps me understand what exactly the math is ACTUALLY describing in
the real world...and sometimes
I can even see relationships that were there but maybe not perceived
directly by a purely mathematical
description.... just my two cents worth.... btw I keep all the messages
you send cos I find them really
interesting and I'm going to read them over and over and hope that they
sink in more and more as I progress
with this. Thanks for sharing! Take care :)
Your Canadian correspondent,
Don J.S. Adams
Please don't
> go out looking for a tar sprayer. I'll save you the trouble by telling
> you what Richard Clem observed while watching his road repair workers
> spraying tar. First of all tar
> has the same mass regardless of whether it is a solid or a liquid. When
> it is slightly
> melted and sprayed out through a curved pipe (about a 60 degree bend)
> there is
> very little thrust reaction (Newton's 2nd law, action reaction) to the
> spray. Really
> heat the tar to a low viscosity high velocity flow and you get a very
> powerful thrust
> reaction from the bent pipe. As Jerry has tried to point out in
> previous post, there
> is possibly a lurking heat energy phenomenon for the tar has the same
> mass as
> before but flowing at higher efficiency and velocity therefore the
> thrust component has gone up drastically. Clem reasoned that if he had
> a rotating unit with many thrusters
> creating torque from hot oil flow this could possibly achieve O/U
> operation for it is
> an effective method of converting heat energy into useful torque or
> horsepower.
> The anomalous behavior here is the square of the radius relationship
> pure and simple.
> His task was to make the device efficient enough to take advantage of
> this critical
> relationship. Think it out and do the math. Norm
>
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