[Land-speed] Sorta On Topic...Leaf Blower...

[joseph lance]

Ed;

You're absolutely right---you always need to carry the units and do rough 
order of magnitude checks.

I think the useful life of analytical design methods is about thirty years 
tops, by then the built in limiting assumptions are forgotten and exceeded 
and even new things break or explode*. Now the units and assumptions are 
buried in the design software and are invisible. We lost a $150M Martian 
spacecraft because of a unit conversion mistake--what's next ?

But it's still nice to see a pretty girl laugh.

Lance

* If an EXplosion sounds like BOOM!!, does an IMplosion sound like MOOB!! ? 
(sorry about that, it's getting very late for me)

----------------------------------------------------

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ed Weldon" <23.weldon at comcast.net>
To: <neil at dbelltech.com>; <drmayf at mayfco.com>
Cc: "'LSR'" <land-speed at autox.team.net>
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2008 10:55 PM
Subject: Re: [Land-speed] Sorta On Topic...Leaf Blower...


> Arrrrgh.....I keep telling you freshmen to pay attention to units when you
> solve your problems and quit thinking about that pretty girl who just 
> laughs
> at you. Lord have mercy!!  Someday you'll be designing bridges and boilers
> and who knows what else that'll fall down or blow up.
> Ed Weldon