It's mesmerizing to watch a mind at work in discovery. Even when we
know in advance that some of the builder's efforts won't work, seeing
how and why the problems are solved is fascinating. This is pure
learning, and schools ought to be structured with such processes at the
heart of their purpose and operation.
At the same time, the parallel process of extracting principles from
experience is best enabled by the presence of mentors or teachers asking
questions, maybe in Socratic form, to elicit reflection to gain
insight. I can see where this guy could have used a few physics,
engineering, and geometry lessons, among other things. And even at the
end he's talking 50 hot dogs in parallel when his heating zone is only
big enough for a few at a time.
Once one's mind is trained, most of the work gets done inside the head
long before the hands get involved.
I had a lot of fun doing the math for a story about smelting steel in
hard vacuum using only the solar energy available out at the orbit of
Uranus. It resulted in a rather cool spreadsheet. It told me that
heating asteroid ores to boil metal would take a rather large and
precisely-aimed mirror. ;-)
D
On 8/27/2010 7:02 AM, Alicia Henn wrote:
http://www.cockeyed.com/incredible/solardish/dish23.shtml
At the bottom of the page is what happens when a collector's item
meets a 12-foot parabola of bright, bright death.
The 22 preceding pages of photos and videos show the evil inventor at
work and show how much adversity must be overcome to achieve your
solar-pyromaniac dreams. Ever wonder what would happen when extreme
heat hits the masking tape that's holding the can of boiling water on
a pole high over your head? That's on page 15.
Alicia
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