Karl P. Platt on sat 18 apr 98
The sometimes amusingly pedantic technology thread here has been too
good to pass up, you know. You can, if you want to bother with it, make
Si3N4 structural ceramics using dung as a fuel. You can also make coffee
cups of river mud firing in a high pressure vessel under an argon
atmosphere heated by platinum wire resistance elements. So what?
The problem with problem solving based on pure induction is best
delineated by a little parable:
There was a chicken who recognized that when the farmer appeared each
day he came with food. So the chicken would run out to greet him and
eat. One day, however, the farmer came out with an axe in his hand
instead of a bucket of feed and the chicken ran up to become dinner.
Moral: it's good to know the difference between an axe and a bucket of
feed.
No, you don't need to know quantum mechanical perturbation theory to
know that tossing cobalt oxide into a garden variety glaze will make it
blue -- you could, however, also make very interesting pink or green. No
you don't need to know the Stefan-Boltzman law to know that one pot
shaded by another in the kiln will be a bit more "raw". No you don't
need to know what Reynold's number is to recognize that your gas line is
too small for the line pressure available as evidenced by cold firing --
but the merits of being able to predict this in advance are obvious.
On the other hand, an absolute lack of knowledge, or glib dismissal of
the utility of any body of knowledge - either folkloric or scientific --
is plain dumb.
I've read some real weird "theories" here in recent days about
combustion and chimney design. Some of these, if proven, would merit a
Nobel Prize as they represent heretofore unknown concepts in the
physical world.
KPP -- basking in a sea of enormous words
Lee Love on sun 19 apr 98
-----Original Message-----
From: Karl P. Platt
>KPP -- basking in a sea of enormous words
*Haha!* I'll be brief. ;^) Nice thing about technology and science is
that a knowledgeable friend (Like you Karl) can help you out with the
answers. If you don't know something, it is good to have friends that do.
On the other hand, the Kokoro (heart/mind, in Japanese) of the
process is not so easily doled out. This part of creativity is hard to
express in numbers and formula. It is tuff to learn in school. The best
way I've found to learn it is to observe someone who already has it.
/(o\' Lee In Saint Paul, Minnesota USA
\o)/' mailto:Ikiru@Kami.com i
' http://www.millcomm.com/~leelove/
terryh on sun 19 apr 98
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karl, i was disasapointed to see nothing about anisotropy in your post.
i'm very much interested in anisotropy, especially in anisotropic =
resistivity.
of course, nothing to do with clayart, except clay is a very good example
of longitudinally anisotropic material. (grin)
btw, No you don't need to know the Stefan-Boltzman law to know that
one pot shaded by another in the kiln will be a bit more =22raw=22. because
it has nothing to do with shading.
btw, did you know that there were 14, i believe, u.s. patents of perpetual
motion machine? i think karl was right saying =22doubt everything=22, (karl =
m.)
especially on the internet.
terry hagiwara
e-mail: thagiwara=40halnet.com (W)=3B terryh=40pdq.net (H)
web: http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/3755
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