Invention Sees Through Walls

baytoday.ca ^ | 1/16/05 | Phil Novak

[reagan_fanatic]

[TXnMA]

Is this a thing people at MIT folks actually spend their time doing.....creating such elaborate hoaxes?

You bet your perpetual motion machine they do! Those MIT guys pull off some of the funniest, most thorough, and best-planned stunts in the world.

One of my favorites was when they buried a big weather balloon mid-field, right on the 50-yd line before the MIT-Harvard game. Right before kickoff, they triggered the thing by remote control, and suddenly, right in the middle of the field, there was this huge sphere with "MIT" painted on it. LOL!

Then there was this one, which established the "Smoot" as a unit of length:

Harvard Bridge spans the Charles River linking Boston and Cambridge.  In 1958 Lambda Chi Alpha took 5' 7" MIT freshman pledge Oliver R. Smoot, Jr. and rolled him head over heels the entire length of the bridge.  Every ten smoots they calibrated the bridge, painting marks. The bridge was found to be exactly 364.4 smoots plus an ear.  Successive pledge classes repainted the markings.

Guess all that genius energy and ingenuity has to go somewhere... '-}

...and, no, I didn't attend MIT...

[Calpernia]

This stuff is so far over my head...I have no idea what is real, fantasy, propaganda....

[beyond the sea]

This stuff is so far over my head...I have no idea what is real, fantasy, propaganda....

Me too. I'm fascinated (and confused) by the simplest scientific things -- such as the swirl (clockwise/counter-clockwise) of the water going down the toilet above and below the equator. What happens to toilets located right on the equator, btw? Straight down the old shoot?

[Calpernia]

That is profoundly funny! ::giggling::

[mwyounce]

Hey, isn't that the laser from Real Genius?

No, that was a "5 megawatt iodine laser frozen in a argon matrix!"

When I mention that movie, most people I know have never seen it. But they should... it's a moral imperative. :-)

[AFreeBird]

That's funny. That's what my mother told me when I told her I liked this song by Nino Temple/April Stevens - 'Deep Purple' back in the 60's.

She told me it had been a hit song back in the 30's or 40's. Ha!

What's even funnier; my mom bought an 8 track tape of Deep Purple - "Smoke on the Water" thinking it was THAT song!

Boy was she surprised when she plugged it in. I got the tape.

[beyond the sea]

Yoi..............she got ripped off!

[rock58seg]

Can proctoscope be far behind??? LOL

[aruanan]

What happens to toilets located right on the equator, btw? Straight down the old shoot?

Above or below the equator, they swirl pretty much whichever way the water jets are pointed.

[beyond the sea]

Above or below the equator, they swirl pretty much whichever way the water jets are pointed. ---

Seriously, is that true. Are you saying that that story of the different hemispheres and the water flow is untrue?

[aruanan]

Seriously, is that true. Are you saying that that story of the different hemispheres and the water flow is untrue?

Yes, it's true. No, I'm not saying that the Coriolis effect is untrue. It's just that local conditions can overcome general effects. If the water is draining out of your tub counterclockwise and you swirl your hand around clockwise, you can make the swirling become clockwise. If you have water jets on the toilet pointing counter that of the Coriolis effect, the water is going to go in whichever direction the greater force is exerted in, ie., the toilet water input.