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#117074 12/03/03 07:35 PM
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I think this a fun place to browse. I was looking for origin of "Prunes and Prisms" used by Dickens, and got a
pleasant surprise:
http://www.amsta.leeds.ac.uk/~pmt6jrp/personal/oldquotes.html

#117075 12/03/03 07:58 PM
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Help! Someone explain what's funny about this:
"At the age of seven, Carl Friedrich Gauss started elementary school, and his potential was noticed almost immediately.
Quoted in the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive "

I found this:
At the age of seven, Carl Friedrich Gauss started elementary school, and his potential was noticed almost immediately. His teacher, Büttner, and his assistant, Martin Bartels, were amazed when Gauss summed the integers from 1 to 100 instantly by spotting that the sum was 50 pairs of numbers each pair summing to 101.

And later I found that it is an in joke for students of Gauss, who developed a Theory of Potentials. Or something like that. Not many mathematicians are humorists.

#117076 12/03/03 08:02 PM
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I didn't get the impression that they were supposed to be funny. Now if the Gauss quote had been about Alessandro Volta…


#117077 12/03/03 08:37 PM
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I remember something from WWII about a de-Gaussing belt being put around ships' waterline as protection against floating mines triggered by magnetism or something in steel hull. That could be a type of potential.


Dear Faldage: Do you suppose Jean Harlow thougt "t" silent as in Harlow was funny? But Margot Asquith obviously did.

#117078 12/03/03 08:43 PM
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There was an area in Hampton Roads that was supposed to activate deGaussing cables built into the ship I was on. The cables on the ship were about a foot in diameter. I believe it was more a matter of ensuring the accuracy of magnetic direction indicating equipment than any protection against mines, but I could be wrong. I was never intimately involved with the process.


#117079 12/03/03 09:13 PM
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Degaussing equipment was installed in the hull of Navy ships and could be turned
on whenever the ship was in waters that might contain magnetic mines, usually ...
www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq21-1.htm


#117080 12/04/03 12:22 AM
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All major U.S. naval ports have a degaussing range through which ships must periodically pass to ensure their magnetic signature has been nullified (as a mine countermeasure). I've been through the San Diego degaussing range several times.


#117081 12/04/03 01:15 AM
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Dear JH: All steel has some magnetic properties. I know it is possible to make a magnet, e.g. by holding a steel of iron bar aligned with the magnetic field, and hitting the end with a hammer. I can imagine that the hull of a ship might become irregularly magnetized. Then a magnetic mine as ship passed would detect a fairly rapidly fluctuating magnetic field. Any chance that this is what the magnetic mine would be triggered by?


#117082 12/08/03 06:32 AM
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A steel-hulled ship is like a huge floating magnet with a large magnetic field surrounding it. As the ship moves through the water, this field also moves and adds to or subtracts from the Earth's magnetic field. Because of its distortion effects on the Earth’s magnetic field, the ship can act as a trigger device for magnetic sensitive ordnance or devices which are designed to detect these distortions. The degaussing system is installed aboard ship to reduce the ship's effect on the Earth's magnetic field. In order to accomplish this, the change in the Earth's field about the ship's hull is "canceled" by controlling the electric current flowing through degaussing coils wound in specific locations within the hull. This, in turn, reduces the possibility of detection by these magnetic sensitive ordnance or devices.

The ship's permanent magnetization is the source of the ship's permanent magnetic field. The process of building a ship in the Earth's magnetic field develops a certain amount of permanent magnetism in the ship. The ship's induced magnetization depends on the strength of the Earth's magnetic field and on the heading of the ship with respect to the inducing (Earth's) field.


#117083 12/09/03 04:34 PM
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Ok, maybe somebody can explain the use of degaussing in relation to television ??? I noticed in the Murphy Brown TV show that there was a big envelope kind of thing on a wall that said degausse. Wha's that al'bout?


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