Apollo: One gas environment?

In article ,
Pat Flannery writes:


Peter Stickney wrote:

It's amazing how well she (And I suppose your precedents) understood
stuff like the Heating Value of various types of wood, and could
precicely control the temperature by observing the color of the coals
in the firebox.


This sounds like the way that Japanese master swordmakers knew
everything about everything when it came to heating, annealing, and
tempering their swords....wow, Zen and the art of cooking?

You made me pull out my translation of De Re Matallica, and some of my
notes from Materiels Science, Lo those many decades ago (When there
were only 103 Elements, because we had only manufactured 11)
Back before pyrometers, and often still today, Smiths adn
Metallurgists determined the temperature of a material by its color
while it was in the furnace. I just pulled out my table of colors
vs. temperatures - with a little practice, you could tell the temp to
withing 10-20 degrees. Not bad when you're talking 1500-2000 degrees.


--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster

Pat Flannery wrote:
Peter Stickney wrote:

It's amazing how well she (And I suppose your precedents) understood
stuff like the Heating Value of various types of wood, and could
precicely control teh temperature by observing the color of the coals
in the firebox.

This sounds like the way that Japanese master swordmakers knew
everything about everything when it came to heating, annealing, and
tempering their swords....wow, Zen and the art of cooking?

It has nothing at all to do with Zen, and everything to do with
experience and in the case of the master swordmakers, apprenticeships
and formal training.

In particular the swordmakers *didn't* know 'everything' about
annealing, etc... Just what worked and what didn't. They were
utterly innocent of any knowledge of the underlying principles, and
utterly unable to devise new tempering schedules to conform to changed
metals. (Though they could discover them via trial and error, a
different matter entirely.)

Kinda like the medieval swords where they discovered recently some
unique alloys. (Titanium IIRC.) The smiths didn't know from
titanium, but they knew swords made with a 'capful of the sands of the
Ile De saints' produced a superior weapon.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

In message
Andrew Gray wrote:

On 2004-05-12, Anthony Frost wrote:

You are required to have a valid licence for the operation of equipment
capable of receiving broadcast TV signals. 120 quid for a colour set
(VCRs are assumed to be colour equipment) less for black and white only.
The licence covers all equipment installed on the premises.

There's odd exemptions involving battery-powered equipment, though;
wither they don't require it or a license in the owning premises
suffices to cover it being used in an unlicensed property; there may
also be certain exemptions in odd cases.

Equipment that is solely powered by batteries, no float charging from
the mains allowed, is OK when used in a caravan or by students as long
as there's a licence for the home address.

Anthony

--
| Weather prediction will never be accurate until we |
| kill all the butterflies |

On Sun, 16 May 2004 07:48:45 GMT, (Derek
Lyons) wrote:

Kinda like the medieval swords where they discovered recently some
unique alloys. (Titanium IIRC.) The smiths didn't know from
titanium, but they knew swords made with a 'capful of the sands of the
Ile De saints' produced a superior weapon.

....Which always had me wondering just what sort of R&D programs the
ancient metallurgists actually implemented. How much was simply "trial
and error" as opposed to "ok, this worked. Now, send a couple of
apprentices to pick up different colored piles of **** and we'll mix
them in one at a time to see if the resulting soup will kill more of
the enemy."

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

On Sun, 16 May 2004 07:48:45 GMT, (Derek
Lyons) wrote:

Kinda like the medieval swords where they discovered recently some
unique alloys. (Titanium IIRC.) The smiths didn't know from
titanium, but they knew swords made with a 'capful of the sands of the
Ile De saints' produced a superior weapon.

It's unlikely they had titanium, since it can't be produced carbothermically.

I think what you're remembering involved vanadium.

Paul

In article ,
OM om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_researc h_facility.org writes:
On Sun, 16 May 2004 07:48:45 GMT, (Derek
Lyons) wrote:

Kinda like the medieval swords where they discovered recently some
unique alloys. (Titanium IIRC.) The smiths didn't know from
titanium, but they knew swords made with a 'capful of the sands of the
Ile De saints' produced a superior weapon.

...Which always had me wondering just what sort of R&D programs the
ancient metallurgists actually implemented. How much was simply "trial
and error" as opposed to "ok, this worked. Now, send a couple of
apprentices to pick up different colored piles of **** and we'll mix
them in one at a time to see if the resulting soup will kill more of
the enemy."

There had to be something, at some level.
Consider teh case of the Bezoar Stone. A Bezoar Stone is something
that, when you put it into a goblet of Wine, will neutralize any
poison dissolved in the Wine. (And thus highly prized by Kings &
such). And in fact, Bezoar Stones exist. What they are is Calcified
Goat Hairballs, which remain in the stomach of a Goat until, well, you
can open up the goat to get them. That in and of itself wasn't so
odd, folks had lots of odd ideas, in those days, The really strange
thing is that it works. In an acidic environment, such as wine, the
calcium in the Goat Hairball will bind up Arsenic, which was the most
commonly used poison. One has to winder about the test program,
though.

Folks back then also learned a lot through experience, too. Take
mushrooms for example. Neanderthal Man knew that some tasted pretty
good, some would kill you, some would make you damned sick, and some
would make you want to listen to the Doors through headphones for
three days.

--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster

On 2004-05-16, Paul F. Dietz wrote:
On Sun, 16 May 2004 07:48:45 GMT, (Derek
Lyons) wrote:

Kinda like the medieval swords where they discovered recently some
unique alloys. (Titanium IIRC.) The smiths didn't know from
titanium, but they knew swords made with a 'capful of the sands of the
Ile De saints' produced a superior weapon.

It's unlikely they had titanium, since it can't be produced carbothermically.

I think what you're remembering involved vanadium.

I've a book referring to a Japanese sword (it's vaguely phrased, and I
don't know if it's one example or a set made by one guy) which turns out
to be sixteenth-century (?) moly steel.

We can presume the method didn't persist :-)

--
-Andrew Gray

"Derek Lyons" wrote in message
...
In particular the swordmakers *didn't* know 'everything' about
annealing, etc... Just what worked and what didn't. They were
utterly innocent of any knowledge of the underlying principles, and
utterly unable to devise new tempering schedules to conform to changed
metals.

The Fallacy of the Golden Age- the assumption by those who would wish it so
that, merely because someone could create a thing, that they understood what
they had created. Our forefathers were far more often just plain lucky, and
that didn't change unil the last few centuries. Just because some ancient
Greek could create what appears to be a battery hardly means that that
person knew diddly about electrical theory.

On 16 May 2004 14:05:03 GMT, Andrew Gray
wrote:

I've a book referring to a Japanese sword (it's vaguely phrased, and I
don't know if it's one example or a set made by one guy) which turns out
to be sixteenth-century (?) moly steel.

....And when it's been properly blessed and annointed, does that make
it holy moly steel? :-P

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

On Sun, 16 May 2004 10:04:02 -0400, (Peter
Stickney) wrote:

In an acidic environment, such as wine, the
calcium in the Goat Hairball will bind up Arsenic, which was the most
commonly used poison. One has to winder about the test program,
though.

....I suspect what happened was something along the lines of this:
Maladia, poisoner for King Schmuckus of Dip****sia, ran out of test
animals to try out some new poison on. She grabbed the first animal
she came upon, a goat that happened to be nearby in a field. When the
poison didn't work on the goat when it should have based on the known
properties of the ingredients, she had the goat killed and inspected
its stomach to see if there was anything out of the ordinary. There
she found the "stones", did some additional testing once she captured
some more rabbits, squirrels, rats and a couple of kids who'd managed
to screw up a gingerbread house and murdered an old drinking buddy of
hers, she was able to determine that for some reason these "stones"
neutralized the poison. So, as any good chemical weapons dealer would
have done, she marketed the poison *and* the antidote and cleaned up.

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr