[geeks] Why? i.e. why do people have such poor math & engineering skills?

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Wednesday, July 31, 2002 at 15:45:10 (-0400), Tim H. wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [geeks] Why? i.e. why do people have such poor math &   engineering skills?
>
> I can do that with electronics, weights of meat (I spent a couple years
> in college working in a seafood dept.) and a few things like that (like
> how much old equipment can you fit in that Geo Tracker?!?!?) but

very good skills indeed!

> I must
> say I have never been able to do it with objects like cannons or walking
> draglines.  

well a cannon barrel isn't hard to guesstimate if you've any idea how
heavy iron is per unit of volume.  Even if you measure a square box that
the thing would fit into and caclulate it's volume you'll still be close
enough to 

Now the walking dragline, well that's something else entirely because
the scales are so huge that we little humans can't begin to measure them
without getting up close and climbing around.  There's a picutre near
the front of "Giant Earth-Moving Equipment" by Eric Orelemann of the
author, who's a big tall 6'4" guy, standing beside one track of the
Marion 6360 stripping shovel, and he looks like an ant.  The pads alone
weight 3.5 tons each, and there are 42 per crawler belt and 8 crawler
belts.  It just gets bigger from there on up (21 stories up).  You can
drive a pair of semi-tractor trucks with full-height trailers down
between the crawlers, side by side, with lots of room to spare
(i.e. it's got room between its "feet" for a full two-lane highway), and
you could probably park four 53' trailers under there and never see them
from the air.

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

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