Comic Info:
December 26, 2011 - 7:53am
You're all really smart, right? I don't need to tell you not to start a generator indoors. Don't do that. :)
![[426] - A Simple Procedure](http://www.wastedtalent.ca/sites/default/files/imagecache/comic_square/comics/2009/wt_running_ndt.jpg)
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Comic Comments
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Comments
Aw man, it's polluting everything!
Suddenly, Canada withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol makes sense. But hey, more candy for us! :D
Hey! As a kid growing up in Manila, we dealt with rolling blackouts by using one of those generators to keep the lights running! (And yes, we had it indoors. It was not pleasant.)
Should have brought in a chunk of natural uranium instead! That's what those Canadian reactors are for!
Nah. The smallest reactor designs available are about the size of a hot tub.
Hahaha oh engineers.
So often overthinking things.
I was dating one once and he was pondering a design.
"Ugh, I need something that compresses easily on one axis, but resists compression on other axises, and retains it's shape, in a cylinder."
"You mean a spring?"
He didn't talk to me for an hour after that.
Might have been more fun if he'd then asked you to describe the shape of one - without using your hands...
If you think that's easy, just try it!
Imagine one of those roller pizza cutters attached to one of those pulley clotheslines by the end of it's [possessive] handle. The handle is perpendicular to the line, and the plane of the blade of the cutter almost includes the clothesline, but not quite because the cutter is rotated *just slightly* towards the direction where it's [p] plane would cut the line transversely; how much determines how tightly coiled your spring is and in what direction we will discuss momentarily. Okay, if you have got all that, imagine pulling the clothesline so that the cutter travels in one direction. Simultaneously rotate the line around it's [p] axis so that the end of the pizza cutter also rotates; how fast you do these two things in relation to each other will also determine the tightness of the spring. The blade part of the cutter will trace out a helical prism (approximating many spring shapes) as long as you tilted it so that the flat part of the blade was into the 'wind' created by your generated spiral motion.
Try it sometime when you want your neighbors to look strangely at you!
Oh that's hilarious! I wish I could have seen his face is those moments... I'm sure it was priceless!
I recently saw a picture of a gingerbread AT-AT (from Star Wars, for those of you wondering). My first thought while reading this was... "Omg... they could make it MOVE!!!"
Well, don't leave us in suspense, did your team win?
Oh my yes
That Electrical Engineer must be REALLY smart! :)
Or just completely paranoid, I'd say...