Kevin Reid ([info]kpreid) wrote,
@ 2009-05-13 13:44:00
Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend  Next Entry
Entry tags:college, irrelevant, physics

The overstuffed ballot box

I get the feeling the textbook writers had a list of everyday objects which they randomly picked from to avoid saying “an object” in each exercise. The results are mostly just distracting or mildly amusing, but sometimes they're a bit too much:

Sample Problem 9-6One-dimensional explosion: A ballot box with mass m = 6.0 kg slides with speed v = 4.0 m/s across a frictionless floor in the positive direction of an x axis. The box explodes into two pieces. One piece, with mass m_1 = 2.0 kg, moves in the positive direction of the x axis at v_1 = 8.0 m/s. What is the velocity of the second piece, with mass m_2?

— Halliday, Resnick, Walker, Fundamentals of Physics, 8th ed., page 215


(9 comments) - (Post a new comment)


(Anonymous)
2009-05-13 07:20 pm UTC (link)
Halliday and Resnick is still the shit.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]seawasp
2009-05-13 08:00 pm UTC (link)
Are they actually both still ALIVE? I mean, I think H&R were my textbook in high school, and that's what, 30 years ago?

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]kpreid
2009-05-13 09:11 pm UTC (link)
It's like sausage. Or zombies.

No, wait.

The authors' very souls are bound by ancient printers' rituals to the pages of each copy made. In theory, the book then mediates a link between writer and student, granting the student knowledge and skill in thinking, and the writer, immortality. In practice, when the book has any degree of popularity, the effects of extreme fractional replication of the binding results in the students receiving only half-baked ideas and somnolence from extended contact with the book; while the authors' continuation is outwardly sound and hearty, they lose a certain unknown essence, and will never again be truly great.

...

[...I'm sure you could do this better.]


[Disclaimer: The above is not intended to be further criticism of the abovementioned textbook or its authors.]

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]kpreid
2009-05-13 09:14 pm UTC (link)
Oh, and while you're here, will Jason Wood ever meet Clinton Slade?

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]seawasp
2009-05-13 10:11 pm UTC (link)
They are not technically in the same universe, although "Diamonds Are Forever" was written in such a way that I could theoretically combine them.

I did have them intersect in a game I was running, though. Clint and Jodi would probably make excellent agents for Project Pantheon as the world kept getting wierder.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]kpreid
2009-05-13 10:38 pm UTC (link)
The Makurada Demagon isn't the same event as the fall of Atlantaea? You disappoint me.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]seawasp
2009-05-13 11:43 pm UTC (link)
They COULD have been (well, specifically, the Makurada Demagon, the Senseless Shattering, would refer to the Sealing of Magic, which was part of but not all of the Fall of Atlantaea), but as Diamonds was a co-authored work I made no immediate and necessary connections. If many years go by and neither of us does anything with the background, I might fold them into my universe, but it's partly Eric's too.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]kpreid
2009-05-13 11:58 pm UTC (link)
(I appreciate the distinction; I just didn't want to immediately reread enough of Digital Knight and Shadow of Fear to see if you had a term for what you now call the Sealing of Magic.)

Ah, I had forgotten and not noticed that it was co-authored.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]seawasp
2009-05-14 11:28 am UTC (link)
There is a term for the Sealing -- several, actually, depending on who's talking about it -- but it's not the same one.

Well, as Eric himself said, "Ryk, if there was any justice in the world, my name wouldn't even be ON this thing, because all I did was throw a couple ideas at you and say 'go, go'. On the other hand, about a hundred times more people know my name as compared to yours, so with my name on this we'll probably sell a lot more copies."

(Reply to this) (Parent)

(9 comments) - (Post a new comment)

Create an Account
Forgot your login or password?
Login w/ OpenID
English • Español • Deutsch • Русский…