OT: Mathematical Conundrum III

[Richard]

The OP is trying to find out who tops the "Too much time on your hands" league.

[AnthonyL]

My removal company sells the boxes at ?3ea - but if they are returned in re-usable condition that money is refunded. I've done the first part but not tested the second part. So Conundrum IV - how much will I get back?

[AnthonyL]

I wish I'd done that. We just got to the stage where we couldn't get to anything anymore because of bloody moving boxes so we've ended up with return trips - though it was nearer a 20mile move than 200mile.

[Dave Liquorice]

I should hope they are, after all they do it all the time...

drawers,

occupies

Wraping each thing in tissue paper? Yea gads, a) Tissue paper is rather fragile, hard and thin. "Packing paper" is better IMHO. By "packing paper" I mean the sort of paper used to wrap yer pie 'n chips in. Has some strength, a bit of thicknes so is a little bit soft. No need to wrap individually, just have a layer of paper between things in the box. In a layer it wiggles up and down between them and a sheet to seperate layers.

Agree but easier said than done. A sort of rule is if you haven't needed it in a year you don't need it. But it's a lose rule, I have some tools and things I've bought more than 12 months ago that are still in the sealed packaging but I know they will get used at some point. Same with the "useful bits of wood", copper tube, conduit, guttering.

There are a few boxes here unopened from when we moved here 16 years ago. Books I think. Other boxes have been opened, sorted a bit, stuff back into other boxes and shoved into the loft...

[Dave Liquorice]

Having them pack "breakables" also avoids the argument that it "wasn't packed properly" should something get broken.

The other importnat thing is consistent box size so they stack together nicely, unlike a random selection of used boxes gathered from supermarkets or WHY. Not only does it make loading the van easier, the boxes aren't going to move possibly squishing other boxes. Ideally you have a "small" size, maybe 15" deep x 18" wide x

15" high for books and heavy things and a "large" that has a couple of dimensions in integer ratio. ie for a small box D deep, W wide and H high the large box is 2D wide, W deep and 1.5 H high. This means 6 small occupy the same volume and shape as two large.

[Huge]

[40 lines snipped]

We've already had 3 large purges in the last 5 years, prompted by emptying first my mother's and then my mother-in-law's houses. It isn't enough.

[John Rumm]

A trick we tried that seemed to work, was to dedicate a room as a box room - that way you could just fill it and not need to get to anything buried at the back.

[Huge]

Just had someone round from a removals firm who said he thought our house was quite good on the hoarding front. Ghod knows what bad ones are like.

[Tim Watts]

It was whatever came with the boxes. I call it tissue paper 'cos it was thin and I have no idea what it's proper name is.

Yes - it matched what you describe and yes, a layer between plates, but many things needed it wrapped around and tucked in - cups, jugs, etc.

I had stuff in storage for a while - it got thrown when we evaluated it

- we should have thrown it to start with and had a smaller storage unit

- but these these things are often done when rushed and little time to think...

[Dave Baker]

I suspect given the appalling state of the education system in this country that only a tiny percentage of people would be able to solve something this straightforward anyway. A few years ago I went away for a few weeks and spent some time at a car workshop where a friend worked. One day they had a BMW in for front suspension bush replacement. There were two bushes available. A 33mm diameter one and a 35mm. Dumbell shaped bushes and it was the thinner middle bit you needed to measure. They were trying to measure the old bush to see what they needed to order but had no measuring equipment. No micrometer or even vernier caliper. Trying to hold a ruler against the bush wasn't accurate enough to resolve the 2mm possible error. I got a sheet of A4 paper, cut off a thin strip, wrapped it round the bush and marked the circumference with a pencil then measured it and divided by Pi.

They were gobsmacked. They had no idea what Pi was or how to use it. Apparently in the same 11 years I spent at public school learning maths, physics, chemistry, economics, several languages, geography, history, music and classics they learned almost nothing at state school other than how to read and write to a fairly basic level. It annoys me.

[Tim Watts]

And PI of course *would* have been covered - but they probably marked it as "boring" and purged the knowledge willingly asap.

[whisky-dave]

Or it wasn't covered very well, it wasn't at my school. No real reason for using it was given at scooh no Why would we need it. And even then it was 22/7. We know the greeks used in and the egyptians used it for pyramids but that was it. of course the time wasted on reading shakespeare or virtually any other story book ! What great knowledge to I get from Alice in Wonderland, Kes, Lord of the flies, I learnt how to fall asleep while reading Hemmingway, problem was not learning anyhting useful but having to memorise and regurgitate .

[GB]

I wrote down the three equations on the back of a post-it note in a few seconds. However, what is puzzling me is why anybody thinks that such simple algebra is a "mathematical conundrum"?

[John Rumm]

I found that was often the case - quite often it was "here is how you do xyz", but no background as to why you might want to do xyz or what real problems you could actually solve with the techniques.

The same argument could be turned toward any subject that did not float your boat really. Much as those do today when they announce with pride they have no idea how a screwdriver works.

[Cursitor Doom]

It's part of a series, Dave. Stick around; they'll get trickier. ;->

[John Rumm]

As with all things, its only simple if you have the experience and tools required to solve the problem - otherwise it may as well be black magic.

[charles]

Indeed. In my drama club a few years go, we had to teach the Chairman which end of a hammer to use.

[Cursitor Doom]

I think you're spot on there, m8. They taught these things (badly) as abstract concepts which just left the kids wondering what the point was. Take Pythagoras' right angle triangle formula. It's probably the most useful formula ever discovered in the entire history of mankind and still crops up today in all manner of different fields, but the average man in the street will have no clue about a single one of its legion highly useful applications.

[David Lang]

Hence the need for compulsory registration plates for cyclists.

[Tim Lamb]

In message , John Rumm writes snip

Ah! Johnny Roscoe in his pin stripe de-mob suit around 1955 brought it home to us 11 plus no nothings.

He brought in to class a small electromagnet he had turned on his lathe. Two likely youths were coupled up to a rope at either end and proved unable to separate the keeper while powered by a torch battery. The maths came along when he pointed out that for maximum efficiency the core needed to have the same area as the outer ring. This led on to finding the area of an annulus:-)

Developing an interest is a vital part of education. Again, 1st. year secondary school, spare period. Supervising teacher brought in a beaker containing some alcohol. Set it on a desk top in a little puddle of water and asked someone to blow bubbles in it with a drinking straw. After a few minutes the water had frozen and the beaker was firmly attached to the desk:-)