A school science experiment -" Dipping into science " (Projo Dec.6 , C1 West Bay) .The picture shows Nicole Boucher immersed in a tub of water. A little too C-O-L-D Nicole ?
The story does not mention that the Rocky Hill school demonstration was a repeat of the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes famous experiment: Was the King of Syracuse cheated by a goldsmith ? Was the royal crown a fraud ? While in the tub ( Splish, Splash, I was taking a bath ! ) he had a " eureka " idea - the volume of the water he displaced in the tub was equal to the volume of his body - an irregular shape like the king's crown . It was then a simple matter to compare the volume of the crown with its weight - volume divided by weight equals DENSITY.
Yes, the crown was a fraud and the goldsmith's head - we assume - was lost to science !
Just this criticism : Why the extravaganza to demonstrate a rather simple concept ? The main problem was to determine the volume of an irregular body - a rock would have sufficed !
The students could learn a lesson in CONCENTRATION from old Archimedes : He was killed while studying a geometric figure. Bertrand Russell suspects that the Roman soldier who murdered him -against orders! - had suffered through Euclid's geometry .
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comment:
Ron, I love it! This is the most creative and interesting post I've seen
for months.
Keep up the great work. You're the second Democrat on this forum that's
got a real brain. One question, was it a good looking girl?
Ciao
Guy
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comment from Ron Marshall:
Hi Ron,
You tickled my funny bone by using "Splish Splash.." in your post
on Archimedes! It proves that the happy, liberated kid in you is
irrepressible! I noticed that you did manage to touch some cord in Guy
Fawkes. That alone is something close to a miracle! Even with all his
emotional Fail Safe defenses up and that hard crust to fortify them, I
think something genuinely free & ALIVE flew in under his radar. A song
like Splash Splish could easily strike a vibrant cord in him., since he
could very well associate it with a more carefree younger "happy days."
I think something of the truth you spoke about in our chat, about
finding a world outside ourselves and feeling liberated, is so
compelling that not even a staid and crusty conservative like GF can
escape it. He may still be responding in a self-referential way, but he
was able to get outside himself also and acknowledge that you'd done
something "fantastic." And yes, he learned even a poor dumb Democrat can
have a brain!
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Ron