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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,819
Pooh-Bah
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OP
Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,819 |
I clicked on today's WOTD email even though I already knew the word "gearhead" and didn't expect to really learn much from the email. Happily, I was wrong. I didn't know there was any association with Middle English gere, for example. I always assumed it was derived directly from the gears of an automobile, since gearhead first and foremost is an automotive term that may also be applied to other arenas (or so I always thought).
I have a friend who is a bona fide gearhead. He runs a Volkswagen-Audi garage that specializes in high performance modifications. I just visited him yesterday at his shop, and I always learn something whenever I go out there. He and his employees might not have the same mannerisms as artists or scientists, but they possess all sorts of arcane knowledge from thermodynamics, mechanics, chemistry , Newtonian physics and more, and to see how they can transform a junked car into a gleaming beauty that will do a quarter mile in 11 or 12 seconds is just astounding. So I especially enjoyed the quote from Galileo Galilei that accompanied today's word of the day:
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."
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Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400 |
i have a cousin who is a gear head-- i like him, but rarely talk to him (he lives in MI, and he is always talking cars) i visited him last year on my way to lansing,and surprised the hell out of him when he started to explain what he did -he test engines --he has sensor on engines, one meauring each part of the cycle (four stroke cycle) and he though he would have to explain that to me.. but i knew, intake, compression, ignigtion and exhaust.
he run the engines as i said, taking 4 reading per cycle, at 3600 cycles per minute, and then has fun number crunching the engines performances.. (that is 4(strokes) X 36000(cycles per minute) X 20 (minutes)= a mind boggling number of bits of info to analize..) and he thinks he is the luckiest guy in the world, since he get paid to do this work!
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