On 21/03/2023 00:24, Commander Kinsey wrote:
> On Wed, 15 Mar 2023 15:28:27 -0000, NY <
m...@privacy.net> wrote:
> If I say 4 x 10^1, that means multiplying the 4 by the 10. So if I say
> 4 x 10^-1, it's the same as taking the 4 and dividing it by 10. So I
> guess it makes sense. Simpler to say 4/10 though.
>
> I think I've seen m.s^-1 and m/s equally. Although I've never known the
> dot between m and s.
Maybe the dot was a "funny" of the Nuffield O/A level physics text books.
>> And then we get onto the thorny issue of "traditional" versus IUPAC
>> names for chemical compounds - acetic versus ethanoic acid, isopropyl
>> alcohol versus propan-2-ol: the traditional names are more familiar but
>> the IUPAC names are more systematic and more accurately represent how
>> the atoms are arranged. Familiar versus Sunday-school names ;-)
>
> I prefer the new ones, they're more logical, although if I was old
> enough to have learned the old ones, I probably would end up still
> hanging onto them. Just like I grew up with F, but started using C
> around the 0 mark, as it was easier for 0 to be freezing point. So I'd
> say it's 70 degrees in the living room, but minus 4 outside, using F for
> inside and C for outside. I now use C everywhere. Rooms got a bit
> cooler, since I used to say 70 was room temperature, now I say 20. SI
> units save power!
I've just turned 60 so I was doing organic chemistry in the 6th form in
about 1980. I'd heard a few traditional organic compounds such as
isopropyl alcohol, carbon tet(rachloride), formic acid, acetic acid. But
for most part organic names were brand new to me so I didn't have to
unlearn many traditional ones in order to learn IUPAC equivalents.
The changeover from deg F to deg C seemed remarkably painless. I'm sure
I learned Fahrenheit from my parents when I was a child, but even they
adapted very quickly to Celsius when newspapers and TV weather forecasts
changed.
Fahrenheit always struck me as a bodged job (like so much of the
imperial system) - it was a case of "what's the coldest and the hottest
temperatures we can create in the lab today? Right, let's call the
coldest one 0 and the hottest one 100. Oh, that makes ice freeze at 32
and water boil at 212." At least Celsius makes the freezing and boiling
point of the earth's most common liquid nice round numbers 0 and 100.
>> But the ultimate "grates like chalk on a blackboard"
>
> It doesn't, fingernails do. I had a teacher who would do that to stop
> us chatting. I had another who brought a huge wooden set square down on
> a desk with great force. Although one day it split in half and one half
> flew across the room, missed the heads of a few kids who ducked, and
> cracked the window. Instead of the usual "I like to make noise too!" he
> said "oh dear".
My old maths teacher (who died only last year, aged 101) was a rather
dour and irascible Irishman. But it was all an act: he had a well-hidden
wicked sense of humour. He had a huge wooden pair of compasses for
drawing circles on the blackboard. It had a metal spike on one end which
was protected by a rubber cork. One day he came to use the compasses and
stabbed himself on the spike. Quick as a flash he uttered the immortal
words "Who's stolen the rubber off my prick?"
> The only distance I remember was my PE teacher shouting at me "round the
> perimeter!" - a punishment for disobedience. Since he was a bit queer,
> we used to call it "round the perimeter with your pants down!" This was
> before peadophilophobia - one of my friends fucked a French teacher in
> the swimming pool. Nothing was said.
Lucky friend. My school had very few women teachers. The art teacher was
scary as hell: drop-dead gorgeous, built like a catwalk model, with
immaculate clothing, makeup, hair, perfume. And yet (there's always an
"and yet"!) she failed, totally and utterly, with the sin of Trying Too
Hard, as she walked round with her head in the air exuding an aura of
"look at me". For me, anyone who has to *try* to look attractive, isn't;
attractive women don't have to try, they just are, innately. The art
teacher used to walk around the library when she was taking Private
Study, making almost inaudible orgasmic moans - very off-putting when
she leaned over over you, letting her long hair dangle on your cheek
while she looked at what you were reading, and moaned so softly that you
wondered whether you'd imagined it. She should have been the stuff of
every lad's wet dreams - but she wasn't. My chemistry teacher, on the
other hand, was small, rather plump, and had a strong Lancashire accent
that you could cut with a knife - but she was sex on legs, of the "she
doesn't have to try - she just is" variety.
Your PE story reminds me of cross-country running. This was supervised
by Bertie, the maths teacher I mentioned earlier. On a cold, foggy
afternoon, he would tick our names off while he was standing there in
his thick overcoat and scarf, "cloaked with his breath". Then he'd get
in his nice warm car and drive up to the war memorial to tick us all off
again as we passed on the return journey. Back at school, he'd deign to
get out of his car as the runners arrived back, to count us all back
into school. In the meantime, we'd had to brave all the hazards: being
stoned (I kid you not) by the local kids, splashing through the puddles
in the mud on the unmade road, trying not to puke as we went past the
glue factory where they boiled up animal carcases, avoiding being zapped
by the fizzing electricity pylons, dodging the guard dogs that ran out
of the car breaker's yard. When someone commented to Bertie that he had
the easy part of the deal, as he didn't even run with us, he gave an
evil but utterly disarming and sheepish grin and uttered the immortal
words "That's the privilege of age and experience, lads".