Posted on 03/14/2019 2:04:52 PM PDT by Reno89519
The first calculator I ever saw was at Troy in, I think 1972, it might have been 71. A psychology prof, newly hired said he was surprised to find the department had an electronic calculator. He said they were very expensive.
It was so exotic that it made no impression on me. He passed it around for all the class to see and handle. I have no idea what the functions were. It was about the size and shape of a book.
If Einstein were flying the plane he would still be circling the airport, waiting for the solution, irrational as that sounds.
I once saw this same kind of question in a physics book talking about the coefficient of expansion of steel. If you circled the earth with a band of steel and fit it tightly to the earth, then lined up people all the way around the earth to breathe warm air on it, it would raise the ring something like 20 or 30 feet off the surface.
I remember using those TI calculators with the trig functions, the best ones had a switch to select deg/rad/grads. I didn't own one, the kids who had one (at least two of them planned to pursue engineering degrees) shared them with those of us who didn't.
coefficient of expansion of steel
I have that one tattooed on my wrist, well almost.
One inch per one hundred feet one hundred degrees F.
Close enough to tell if you screwed up or are about to.
Do you recall what was revealed the day the music died?
-PJ
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