Up, down, inside out! (Re:Cool Hand Cliff

Tom Lehman uswa12 at Lorainccc.edu
Thu Oct 28 12:18:52 PDT 1999


My olde big boss, H. Clifton Ames III, retired some months ago after an illustrious career in the steel industry with tours in such garden spots as Homestead, Pennsylvania and Lorain, Ohio.

Cliff was probably the coolest hand under fire that I have ever worked for under total panic/crisis electrical situations.

Cliffy, could be an evil genius at times, although not with yours truly directly.

Cliff is a believer in centrifugal force and a true credit to the Cornell School of Electrical Engineering. Cliff has forgotten more than most electrical engineers know about up, down and inside out.

Once many years ago late on a Friday afternoon, when we were having complex power generation problems Cliff turned to my gang and said, "I've got a date with a lady in Pittsburgh and I'm not going to let this place interfer with my personal life." What a guy!!!

I'm hoping Cliff is enjoying his retirement and I would sincerely recommend him for a position of professor of practical electrical engineering.

Tom Lehman

Btw, it looks like electrical re-regulation has worked out ok in Ohio, much as I suggested, if anyone takes the initiative to do something about it.

Les Schaffer wrote:


> DANIEL.DAVIES (aka dd) saids:
>
> > But are happy with ones which are based on very clear
> > misunderstandings of simple English words. "Up" as a property of
> > quarks is not the opposite of "down". Evocative or nay, that's a
> > wrong use.
>
> what on earth are you saying? (can't you read a map???)
>
> if you look at a map of Strange-Charge space, the up and down quarks
> lie on a line of constant Strangeness and varying Charge.
>
> the up quark has a charge of 2/3, the down quark has a charge of
> -1/3. so, like, in the (positive) charge direction, the up quark is
> higher than the down quark, and so up and down kinda fit. and they are
> opposites in the sense that they have opposite charge (plus and
> minus).
>
> so there is a rough way in which the description up-down works and
> they sit opposite each other in S-Q space. the s quark sits sideways
> direction from the up and down quarks (it has the same charge as the
> down quark), the majority of your daily run-of-the-mill particles are
> made of the up and down quarks. the proton is made of a triple of
> quarks u-u-d ( 2/3 + 2/3 + -1/3 = 1 charge) and neutron is u-d-d ( 2/3
> + -1/3 + -1/3 = 0 charge). (the electron aint got no quarks at'all).
>
> that s-s-s-s-illy (s-s-s-s-ideways) quark makes for oddball stuff and
> so is s-s-s-s-trange indeed. in S-Q space the s (strange) quark is
> neither up nor down from the up quark, but sits kitty corner to it.
>
> > I have no horse in this race -- I'm an economics spod, myself. But
> > I've had my nerves struck hard and often by maths and physics types
> > who regularly truck into the markets, call themselves "rocket
> > scientists" and then proceed to misapply their models to economic
> > data while refusing to understand basic concepts of finance.
>
> this i can appreciate... i know more than a few hot-shot math types
> who try to make this leap.
>
> les schaffer
>
> p.s. some nice pictures and a little "history" which shows why the
> names up and down might have occured at the appropriate historical
> juncture:
>
> http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/hienergy/tutorial/fundamentals.html



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