The BAUT Institute for the Study of Weird Things

[Moose]

In honor of the Royal Canadian Air Farce who are apparently hanging up their microphones next season, I am founding this thread, the "BAUT Institute for the Study of Weird Things", which is intended to be a study of unusual things or events you have personally experienced. (As contrasted to the weird news thread.)

Today I saw something odd. It was a spam. It was sent in German to my government address, shilling for a Russian company, and it had nothing at all to do with porn or mail order brides, but rather IT recruiting.

[Gillianren]

Cats are lovely and graceful and coordinated, right?

Except mine. He regularly falls of my monitor and into the window behind it, occasionally even sliding down to the windowsill. He doesn't even do the feline affronted dignity bathe after, but simply climbs back up. Also, he chases hard candies.

[Jeff Root]

I got an e-mail this morning that I don't know what to do about.

It was a very prompt answer to a scientific question, from a
professional astronomer. Exactly like a joke in the Engineer
Joke thread recently started, the answer is perfectly correct
and completely useless.

I asked:


Can you explain why Mercury, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn,
and Neptune rotate in the same direction as they orbit? The
differential speeds of protoplyd dust particles in Keplerian
orbits (faster closer to the Sun) would seem to favor rotation
in the opposite direction.
The reply was:

It is because of conservation of angular momentum.
Uh. Well, yes, of course angular momentum is preserved. But what
caused six of the eight largest planets of the Solar System to
rotate in the same direction that they orbit, which seems to make
no sense, rather than the opposite direction, which seems natural?

Particles (including clumps and planetesimals of all sizes) in
circular orbit closer to the Sun are moving faster than particles
farther from the Sun, so when two such particles collide and
stick together, the rotation should be predominantly opposite
the direction of orbital motion.

The astronomer is the head of the department. Did he give me all
the answer I deserved? All the answer I need? Am I supposed to
write back to him and clarify my question? Complain that he gave
me a lame and useless answer? Pay tuition for a semester course?

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

[tdvance]

Imagine the original cloud that formed the solar system--each molecule revolves around the center of gravity in Keplerian style. The angular momentum increases as you go out from the center--because, while the angular velocity decreases, this is more than made up for by the "length of the lever arm" increasing. (angular momentum is proportional to mass, angular velocity and to the distance of the particle from the center of revolution). Thus, when several particles coalesce about a local center of gravity to form a planet, the particles farther from (what becomes the) sun have a higher angular velocity component in the direction of the cloud's rotation than the local center of gravity, while particles closer have a lower angular velocity component in the direction of the clouds rotation. As gravity pulls the particles together, conservation of angular momentum will cause rotation in the same direction as revolution.

The idea that they "should" rotate in the opposite direction means you're thinking of angular velocity as being conserved, when it isn't--only angular momentum is conserved.

To be fair to the astronomer--he is required to give priority to the paying customers--practically, that does means tending to his department-head duties and teaching of his classes. Anything beyond that is just a favor--and he gave you the correct answer, just didn't spend more time on it than he knew to be necessary (he can't always guess what the follow-up question will be and pre-answer it!) He was doing you a favor--he's not your employee if you aren't paying him!

Writing back and asking for more info is certainly the reasonable answer. So is paying tuition for a semester course if you really want to learn the subject!

[Kaptain K]

Cats are lovely and graceful and coordinated, right?

Except mine. He regularly falls of my monitor and into the window behind it, occasionally even sliding down to the windowsill. He doesn't even do the feline affronted dignity bathe after, but simply climbs back up. Also, he chases hard candies.

I once watched a cat walk right off the end of a 8 ft tall retaining wall! :doh:

[Neverfly]

I once watched a cat walk right off the end of a 8 ft tall retaining wall! :doh:

He may have been catnap-walking.

[crosscountry]

He may have been catnap-walking.

:lol:





Once while on a Sunday ride (It was Easter Sunday 2004) I turned down a side street in the next town over to see four men trying to push a large car onto a trailer. The car was a Crown Victoria of the very large variety, and the trailer wasn't setup to handle such a wide load. They were actually scraping the sides of the car along the rails.

To make things worse, the trailer was not hitched to anything, and the front tongue floated high in the air. This lowered the back end (no ramps) low enough that one might consider driving onto the deck.

Now, that sounds weird enough, but that ain't nothing. It seems one of the men was driving this behemoth of a car when the front tire went flat. There was no spare, and he called his friends to tow him home. Reasonable right?

Wrong. Before deciding to call his friends the driver took off the front right wheel and had it lifted with a jack. This jack was designed for flat smooth floors, not asphalt parking lots and certainly not for wooden trailer decks. Somehow the four of them (one in the driver's seat spinning the back wheels and three behind pushing) had gotten this car which was resting on 3 wheels and one floor jack (with tiny metal wheels of about 2 inches in diameter) onto the too narrow trailer with tongue way high in the air.

The jack's tiny wheels had gouged into the wood and were nearly completely buried leaving it motionless. The car was rubbing on the trailer's rails on both sides, and three idiots were pushing uphill while the other spun the rear tires.

I can't make this up. One of the guys had brought a metal cutting saw and started to cut one of the rails off of the trailer. I was already leaving when I saw the last part and could barely stifle the laughter that came out of seeing this spectacle. I said good luck, and headed on down the road.

[crosscountry]

This is one I had posted before

Thinking back they weren’t the weirdest people I ever saw. Earlier, before even leaving the campground in the park I got a chance to speak with a family camping there in a homemade RV trailer. Being as kind as possible, I’ll say they appeared Amish with the homemade clothes and girls in dresses with bonnets. They looked out of place there though, the whole family 2000 miles from home – in a car! The story gets much weirder though, more than I cared to ask, but the topping of it all was their rig.

They were pulling a long trailer with plywood siding and roof. There were no windows to be seen. I supposed they were like the doors, both exactly paneled in plywood like the rest of the trailer. I can only imagine how much this thing weighed, probably 2x + what a normal trailer would have. Add to that they were pulling it with a Ford Explorer short bed! Now you probably know that Uhaul won’t rent a trailer to someone with a Ford Explorer because of the danger, but these people neglected to mention that to whomever rented them the car. Now you’re not going to believe this, and I wish I had a photo, but that Explorer was bent! This family had driven it to Oregon and somewhere up there had hit some bump. The truck went up, but the heavy trailer did not. The frame bent right where the cab met thee bed, and they drove this a-framed truck all the way down to Arizona. They even planned to drive it all home. In all of my travels I think that was the strangest thing I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a few strange things.

http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/826/bentexlporerpx9.png

[Neverfly]

That is goofy.
Take the rim to the tire store. Have new tire put on it. Solved.

Or- if the tire store is closed and you don't want to abandon the vehicle...

It would have cost all of twenty five dollars or so to rent a cheap trailer (With ramps) that was wide enough and five bucks for a can of Fix-A-Flat.

Put the tire back on the hub. Fix-A-Flat the tire. Spin it a few times. Lower the vehicle and drive it up the ramps on the rental trailer.

If the tire was shredded- driving it up onto the trailer on a shredded tire wrapped around the rim is much better than on a jack.

it's goofy no matter how you look at it.:doh:

[Moose]

Nev, anything up to and including torching the car for the insurance would have been smarter than what these guys did. Wow.

Crosscountry, I never saw anything like the folks in your RV story, but I did witness a pickup break its back on a lift in the shop. It was sad to see. Its spine bent at a frame-weld between the cab and bed, same place as the RV folks. The truck had been written off and restored, but not welded well enough.

[crosscountry]

these guys had driven a thousand miles like that and planned nearly 3k home. That wood was so heavy it would have taken something much stronger than an explorer to pull it.


and Neverfly, the guys that tried to put that car on the trailer probably couldn't even get their shoes tied without help. They had no idea what they were doing.

[crosscountry]

one more weird things done in a car.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9XZwDYwGdY



Yes safe for work, only a car pulling a trailer.

[Moose]

Just remembered something kind of dorky-cool I saw last year: a farm tractor driving towards downtown Bathurst on St Peters (our 4-lane boulevard) during the morning rush hour commute. The farmer must have had the thing close to redlined, because it was keeping up with the cars. What makes this a weird story is my later realization that nobody (other than non-local me) so much as batted an eye. The weirdness is in how normal an experience it was for everyone else.

I've since been much more aware of how many street legal farm tractors there are in the area, and how often I see 'em on the road.