|
|
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
|
OP
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
Dear Bingley: I have heard of "lead-footed" drivers, but not the expression you mentioned. When I was small, the expression for someone driving too fast was "forty miles an hour". For purposes of exaggeration "going like sixty".
You didn't expect anyone to believe that.
My father had a six cylinder Peerless, with one of the first broad bore, short stroking engines.I remember his going 96 mph on a long straight stretch, when I was perhaps ten years old. Some of the Stanley Steamers at that time could go faster, but I never had a ride in one. Allegedly the builder offered a cash reward to anyone who dared floor and hold the accelerator on one of those. No internal combustion engine of the time could match it. But it took several hours to get the steam pressure up, and you had to be sure you could get pure water for the boiler before you had gone very far.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296 |
In reply to:
So the Indians were lifting
about a third of a horsepower.
wwh, you know math bores me and that I'm entirely too laisez-faire in attitude toward math--but:
What about the 'per second' part of the equation and the Indian? We don't have any information, do we, about how rapidly these Indians hauled those loads up, do we? We know how many loads in a day--but we don't know exactly the amount of time, do we? I mean, we know loads per day, but we don't know exactly how long it took to get one load up, do we?
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
OP
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
Dear WW: Imagine walking up stairs. A step per second is about right, I think. There is no advantage to doing it either much slower or much more rapidly. If you count "one thousand, two thousand, three thousand.." , the counts are pretty close to a count per second.
I think the Indians could go up a step each second, and each step could be a foot high. So two hundred pounds of ore, plus a hundred and fifty pounds of Indian, rising one foot per second is 350/550, or .63 horsepower. Hey Bean, where are you when we need you?
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803 |
Down in the Grand Canyon of the Colorada in (of course) Arizona, there is a tale of some Havasupai, I believe, Indians who carried a piano down to the bottom and *ran back up afterwards.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400 |
regulareyly, a there is a contest/race to the top of empire state building.
the winner this year is a fireman (from somewhere, not NY) (again-firemen regularly win the contest) who went from floor 1 to 86 in 12 minutes. about 10 feet to a floor, and a few utility floors, (and the first floor has a triple height ceiling) too, so 900 feet or so. stairs are about 7.25 high each, but winner reguarly take them 2 at time..
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296 |
Oh, of troy! What a terrific thing to know about NY! What a great and somehow very funny race to know about! This is as good as the Volvo Ballet, was it?
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400 |
It really made the news big, a few years ago... there was a fireman(NYC) who had been injured on the job, and wanted to return to work, doing admnistrative work (actually doing fire safety inspections) but he keep being denied.. then he won the race up to the top of empire state building.. (he was fit, and could walk, he had injured his upper back and couldn't carry anything)...
well soon after winning the contest, he was back at work, instead of staying home collecting full salery on disablity.
everyone is always keen to cover stories about people who scam and cheat and abuse disability, this was memorable because he had to scheme to get off disability!
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
OP
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
Dear WW: if a 150 lb firewman climbed 900 feet in 720 seconds, he had done 135,000 foot pounds of work in 720 seconds, or 187.5 foot pounds per second. 187.5 divided by 550 equals .34 horsepower.
Of course the Indians carrying 200 pounds almost certainly had to rest a couple times on the way up. But they did it twelve times a day, so it was still remarkable.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296 |
To both of troy and wwh:
These are truly amazing tales, both of them.
Specifically to wwh:
You speak of mathematics in such a terrific way that I wish you'd been all of my math teachers. I think I may have come one day to have worked calculations.
At least--at the very least--I do read what you write with interest although I'm not quite tempted enough to sit down with a pencil and paper and try what you naturally do myself. Many of the threads I read here I just pass over as being not-so-terribly interesting--but your mathematical observations I always pause over with real interest. You're a very good writer.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
OP
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
Dear WW: thank you for your excessively kind words. At math I'm just barely out of the dunce class. My older brother could do problems in his head almost instantly that took me five minutes on paper. I had a physics class with prof named Newton Henry Black (three physicists in one name)and we had a dozen such problems every day for a year. Enough repetition that dunce as I am at math, I can still do that kind of problem. But not in my head.
|
|
|
|
Forums16
Topics13,913
Posts229,351
Members9,182
| |
Most Online3,341
Dec 9th, 2011
|
|
|
0 members (),
775
guests, and
0
robots. |
|
Key:
Admin,
Global Mod,
Mod
|
|
|
|
