beasly
Well-Known Member
Apologies in advance for being a bit rambling, but I think you will enjoy this story.
A fellow engineer and I where chatting in the office yesterday (he is the guy with the "paper airlplane a day" calendar) and the subject of his failure to get into the Naval Academy came up (seems there are some serious hoops to get in there).
Anyway, as a youngster, he went to the equivalent of a "career day" at the academy and he went to the Aeronautical Engineering (?) department for a seminar where a professor gave a demonstration...
To convey this, you need to picture a camshaft and piston rod where you are holding the camshaft by the end and your goal is to keep a piston at the 12:00 Z (GMT) using twisting motions and lateral motions. Another analogy would be to balance a broom on your nose with the bristles in the air and the end of the broomstick on your nose. I.E. an experiment in dynamic-stability. (right rudder, riiiigght ruddder, Right Rudder RIGHT RUDDER!, my controls--er, sorry,...its ingrained.)
Anyway, while not a camshaft/piston or a broom, the apparatus was held in the hand and the students (my office mate among them) where challenged to keep the "piston" in the air for as long as possible--the average was maybe 8 seconds.
The instructor then intoned, "and that is about as stable as an F-18".
Here is where it gets good.....
The instructor now takes the "end of the camshaft" and replaces the human hand with a computer driven machine....think of taking the camshaft and mounting one end in the engine block.....
The computer driven machine keeps the darn thing stable....frozen at 12:00 (z)
and then it gets better.
....
He hits it with a hammer and the darn thing does not dislodge. (be aware, I am not aware of the forces involved--but my office mate was duly impressed).
So, here we have a naturally dynamically unstable thing, made stable via computers--like an F-18.
I thought it was cool. I hope you do to.
Cordially,
b.
A fellow engineer and I where chatting in the office yesterday (he is the guy with the "paper airlplane a day" calendar) and the subject of his failure to get into the Naval Academy came up (seems there are some serious hoops to get in there).
Anyway, as a youngster, he went to the equivalent of a "career day" at the academy and he went to the Aeronautical Engineering (?) department for a seminar where a professor gave a demonstration...
To convey this, you need to picture a camshaft and piston rod where you are holding the camshaft by the end and your goal is to keep a piston at the 12:00 Z (GMT) using twisting motions and lateral motions. Another analogy would be to balance a broom on your nose with the bristles in the air and the end of the broomstick on your nose. I.E. an experiment in dynamic-stability. (right rudder, riiiigght ruddder, Right Rudder RIGHT RUDDER!, my controls--er, sorry,...its ingrained.)
Anyway, while not a camshaft/piston or a broom, the apparatus was held in the hand and the students (my office mate among them) where challenged to keep the "piston" in the air for as long as possible--the average was maybe 8 seconds.
The instructor then intoned, "and that is about as stable as an F-18".
Here is where it gets good.....
The instructor now takes the "end of the camshaft" and replaces the human hand with a computer driven machine....think of taking the camshaft and mounting one end in the engine block.....
The computer driven machine keeps the darn thing stable....frozen at 12:00 (z)
and then it gets better.
....
He hits it with a hammer and the darn thing does not dislodge. (be aware, I am not aware of the forces involved--but my office mate was duly impressed).
So, here we have a naturally dynamically unstable thing, made stable via computers--like an F-18.
I thought it was cool. I hope you do to.
Cordially,
b.
