From: SFPhysics@aol.com
Date: Wed Feb 14 2001 - 16:29:55 PST
From: SFPhysics@aol.com Message-ID: <6a.b581ea7.27bc7d03@aol.com> Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 19:29:55 EST Subject: Toothpick/Pasta Bridges
> I WOULD LIKE THE PASTA BRIDGES TOO. CAN WE GET A
> PUBLICATION RIGHT HERE ON PINHOLE? THANKS DAN
>>
Dan, privately send me your snail mail address and I'll send off a set of the
pages I still have. I did have more but just discovered that since my
retirement my lesson files have been cleaned off of the district server,
guess they wanted their 180 megabytes back. I am reconstructing the pasta
bridge version of my bridges project from memory on my home computer.
Part of the Physics project is to use a micrometer to find the diameter of
the pasta and then compute the cross-sectional area for comparison of
capellini (angelhair), vermicelli, and spaghetti. Details were done in a
postscript format (not HTML) which will not translate through the pinhole
server and ASCII through the pinhole server alone just handles the alphabet,
etc. Therefore, I'll just make copies of the materials I still have on my
home computer and run them off on my printer. Then I can snail mail them to
you.
This process may take a couple of days as I am again spending all of my time
getting the San Francisco Unified to straighten out my health benefits and
lost work credits for my retirement. This should be a warning to all
teachers, especially in SF, to keep all of the pay stubs in a folder for
proof of employment, pension payments, and health service payments. I did
and it will pay off in court. It is a good thing that being a science
teacher means knowing how to keep organized records, charts, data, and to
document supporting evidence. Otherwise, SF's poor record keeping would have
cost me up to $2,400 a year in lost pension credit.
Al Sefl a.k.a.: SFPhysics@aol.com
Who is taking some great science-related trips............
e.g. The geology of Zion National Park, the engineering of Hoover Dam, the
geology of Death Valley, and the probability of winning at the slots in Vegas
(spent a whole $5 then decided the experiment was getting too
expensive)........
BTW - Science factoid: Hoover Dam was made as thick as a couple of football
fields at the base to hold back *ALL* of Lake Mead; but, they didn't have to
build such a thick dam. They forgot about Pascal's Chimney Experiment that
shows it is the depth of the water that produces the pressure not the amount
of water. So the dam was overbuilt by a factor of at least 10 times the
cement it needed. Up river the Glen Canyon Dam was built in a much shorter
time with much less cement because someone remembered their high school
science demo with Pascal's Chimneys. ;-)
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