Making a Newton's Cradle

[Jules Richardson]

Cartoon bombs, with realistic-looking fuses and "bomb" written on the sides in white lettering.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Matty F saying something like:

HSE Disease mindset, where they see bogies everywhere.

[Bruce]

Just for a laugh, you could put a *real* bomb in there.

Kaboom! ;-)

[Bruce]

There are plenty of men like that too. Gender is not a reliable indicator of whether someone possesses any particular type of sense.

But I suppose someone being from NZ is a slightly more reliable indicator of gratuitous misogyny. ;-)

[Tim Watts]

I worked somewhere where the male H&S idiot used to lock off the tearoom if the tealady (how quaint) wasn't in, "in case someone burn themselves on the urn". FFS... Electronic Engineering department too.

Bit different to the Mech Eng department I worked in the in late 80's. Got stuck in the lift as the doors had come unaligned with each other. Anyway, one of the lecturers (big beard, pipe, tweed jacket, proper mechanical bloke) let me out with the door key. Then rammed his arm between the doors, jiggled the mechanism back into line and wandered off... I took the stairs after that... Oh, and we had a bloody big urn balanced on the fridge right by the door in that tearoom...

[Bob Eager]

[Tim Watts]

Hang on a minute - this is Matty...

Can't you (OP) just get some solid blocks of stainless steel and turn them into hollow spheres, obviously in 2 halves with a nice thread around the diameter of each on so they screw into a perfect sphere?

Extra points for just using a file and angle grinder! ;->>>

I am of course referring to:

[Reentrant]

Why do they have to be spheres? Any shape will do provided there's just a point contact with each neighbour. Maybe it would even work if the faces were flat surfaces, but the alignment would need to be perfect.

[Bruce]

Uh oh. Give a man an H&S title and ...

Eek. I would have used the stairs too.

Back in the 70s, I recall using a lift that had no doors and was in constant motion. Cannot recall where it was but it was somewhere in the UK. Scary. After one try, I took the stairs.

No H&S man, then.

[Clive George]

Paternoster?

I liked the one I had a go in. (oxford, physics or chemistry dept? Can't remember which)

[Huge]

*grin* That would be a pretty kewl Newton's Cradle.

And gives me an excuse to post this (again);

[Bob Eager]

University of Essex libraty had one. Paternoster they're called.

[Tim Watts]

That's why everyone uses spheres ;->

BTW - flat wouldn't be so good, except in a vacuum as the air cushion effect would become quite noticeable.

[Tim Watts]

Paternoster lift? Never had the pleasure, but they do look weird. Always wondered what it's like to go "over the top" in one...

On an aside, there's obviously no H&S in the 24th century - seen those lifts in Star Trek NG in Engineering? Just a platform with the flimsiest of guard rails on the exit...

Probably was - but then, H&S meant "not getting your arm ripped off by a bastard big machine". They had a sense of perspective...

This was also the place, where a story regailed in the tea room, told first hand by a man who had the job of making safe some sort fo pump that used liquid sodium inside (I have no idea what it was for).

Anyway, the usual route (Harlow was it?) was too expensive. So they decided to melt the sodium and discharge it via a pipe under oil. That didn't go well apparantly and they ended up with a litre of liquid sodium on the floor burning away, followed by trying to explain to the nice firemen that hosing it down with water was a bad idea (almost as bad as their original idea!). In the end they dumped a load of sand on it and let it sort itself out...

[Huge]

And even then, if they were perfectly flat you'd have to allow firstly for the Casimir effect and then the Johansson effect.

:o)

[Huge]

Sodium cooled uclear reactor?

You might like this;

[Clive George]

The one I had a go on apparently would stop if you tried that - or maybe it was doing the same at the bottom. Can't see it being too silly though

- the car just follows the u-shaped track and goes down again. Unfortunately it doesn't invert, which would be rather funnier :-)

[Tim Watts]

Harwell...

[Tim Watts]

Don't think so - they didn't do nooclear there...

"it makes asbestos burn" - holy shit...

[Tim Watts]

Over my head, mate...