🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Dec23.081415.4647@adobe.com>, pngai@adobe.com (Phil Ngai)
 writes:
> In article <1992Dec21.193621.12001@microware.com> troyf@microware.com (Troy Frericks) writes:
>>Modern composit materials, when used in a flywheel, will disintegrate
>>with such a failuar.  This bomb would be about as wonderful as some
>>fiber-glass insulation falling out of your attic.
> 
> I repeat my offer to all the liberal arts majors participating in this
> discussion. Surely a gas is even softer and less harmful than "fluff".
> Allow me to subject your hand to the flame of a welding torch and then
> we can continue to talk about how dangerous "fluff" can be.

Yup.  

Reminds me of a guy I once knew who insisted that Newton's Third Law was wrong.
If for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, he said, then when
you fire a gun the gun will hurt you just as much as the bullet hurts the
target. 

I took him through F=ma and k.e.=0.5m(v**2) and did the arithmetic to show that
the bullet gets the vast bulk of the energy by virtue of having less mass to
accelerate... but this wasn't convincing.  He just couldn't accept that Newton
was talking about "force", which is a precisely defined thing, not "action",
and that equal force applied did not mean equal energy imparted. 

Nor did he think that the area over which the recoil was spread was relevant.

Yep, he was a liberal arts major.  

I offered to shoot him as part of a demonstration, but he declined. 

	--- Jamie Hanrahan, Kernel Mode Consulting, San Diego CA
Internet:  jeh@cmkrnl.com, hanrahan@eisner.decus.org, or jeh@crash.cts.com
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