OT: Prince Rupert's Drop

What is the interest here? People wasting their lives?

It's a combination of structural mechanics (the drop is a statically indeterminate structure) and a reminder of nonideal behaviors.

Like, if you only understand differential calculus of smooth functions, encountering a fractal form is a mind-expanding event.

It's a beautiful example of the fragility of assumptions, and the distance between deep understanding and mere common sense.

Almost all the popular videos do little more than get a meaningless structural description out of the way so they can wow the viewer with slo-mo fracture explosions... this is not insight.

Yes. Just as you are doing with your useless post.

pkb? except in your case it's /all/ you do...waste of oxygen.

On Sat, 10 Oct 2015 07:26:25 -0700 (PDT), snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com Gave us:

In this case, I am in full agreement with Mr. Bloggs

Thank you for this interesting link. I did not kmow this and find it interesting. It is about science.

It is a lot more on topic than "interior design" or "usps is destroying jobs" or "troubling smell" or "boehner stepping down?" or "increase of our dictatorship" (all these are recent postings) which are increasing in overall percentage month by month until this newsgroup is no longer worth reading.

Sadly. It had many very interesting discussions over the years and will be killed by people who don't care about others.

Werner Dahn

So how about posting something on-topic, besides just grousing? Like, what was your first electronics project?

Cheers

Phil Hobbs (sitting in Vancouver airport)

Bicycle speedometer/odometer. ~late 70's

George H.

In 1958 I got an Eico 425 scope kit for Christmas. I was 11 then and built it in one day. When I reached around the back while viewing the front screen, I touched the 2000 volt terminal on the tube socket and learned all about being careful with high voltage.

What was your first project?

A TRF radio, ~1947 (vacuum tube, when I was 7 years old... Cub Scout project). I was delirious with delight because I picked up WBZ Boston at first try... from Huntington, WV, about 700 air miles away ;-) ...Jim Thompson

When I was about 10 (1969ish), I had a book called "109 electronics projects", and built several of them. The loudest one was a megaphone with a TR01-C Ge power transistor and a carbon mic. Sure chewed batteries (it was Class A), but was a lot of fun.

Wireless mics were a strong sideline too.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

The speedometer was the 'final project' in an electronic design course. I would have been in my late 20's..(born in '58) I got into electronics late, In high school I wanted to be a marine biologist, or a clown. I somehow got into an environmental engineering program in college, it shut down after I'd been in it for a year... Probably a good thing, in retrospect... And I fell into EE, (I wanted to take the E&M theory class.) George H.

That's a pretty good reason. So you're EE undergrad / physics Ph.D.?

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

This was one of my favorite books, same age:

I was a serial fan of Alfred P. Morgan's "The Boy Electrician" at the local library, too. I built the regenerative radio for a 5th grade project.

And still!

Cool rf circuits, transmitters, fm tx

FM transmitters

Cheers, James Arthur

Wow, Tom Kneitel...there's a blast from the past.

I spent quite a long time feeling very frustrated that I didn't know enough to design my own circuits. I built a fair number of tube circuits that didn't work, based on 6U8As, 12AX7As, and 6BA6es from old TVs. Made me _nuts_.

I was doing it all by myself, which made it a lot slower than if I'd had a mentor. (My older brother was also mildly interested, but he didn't really know any more than I did.)

The frustration was an excellent thing, though--it motivated me to read (mostly ARRL pubs) and figure stuff out.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

With really big shoes, and a red nose? ;-)

Yeah, a fairly crooked academic path. I needed one more lab to finish my EE degree and I found most of the EE labs boring. So I petitioned to take an advanced lab from the physics department. It was a ton more work, but there was all this nice equipment to play with. (NMR, X-ray diffraction, and Mossbauer effect) The physics department said that was fine, but I needed to take a modern physics course at the same time. The professor teaching the course hired me to work in his lab that summer and eventually became my PhD adviser.

George h.

I 1/2 filled out an application to Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey clown college, but never sent it off.

and I've certainly always been more than willing to "play the clown". It lets me say silly stuff here, get corrected, and learn something.

George H.