Almost a Riot

I almost started a riot in the office yesterday. I must have mentioned that I share a cubicle with two maths PhDs. Yesterday I foolishly mentioned that I thought most people probably didn't know how aeroplanes stayed in the air. I can't remember why I said it, but it prompted a few comments about air moving faster over the top of the wing than beneath it. I said that I wasn't sure it was true, since air split at the leading edge doesn't necessarily have to meet again at the trailing edge. I'd read this somewhere, and that the famous "Bernoulli" principal was only a very small factor.

Anyway, George started mouthing off about how air definitely does meet again at the trailing edge, though didn't explain why, and asked me how aeroplanes do fly. I told him I wasn't really sure, but that I'd read that fluid flowing over a curved surface tends to stick to the surface, thus pulling down on the air as it flows down the trailing part of the wing. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, as we all know, and this pulling down of air can also be considered to cause a "lift" effect in the opposite direction. He questioned my use of the phrase "stick to", so I changed it to "follow the contours of".

Alan was keeping pretty quiet but was looking troubled, so I prompted him for an opinion. He claimed that air didn't have to meet at the trailing edge, but that air over the top of the wing was travelling faster, but he couldn't explain it. Then a passer-by pitched in something about diverting air flow, and Alan started talking about fluid dynamics around a cylinder and a pole on a complex plane or something. He was going quite well until I pointed out that his cylinder was symmetrical and asked him why there was no negative lift on the underside. He then started talking about eddies.

At that point my boss appeared and rehashed the whole Bernoulli thing. I told him we were in the process of proving that all wrong. It was only then that I noticed the steam coming out of George's ears. He told me I was disruptive and must have been a very difficult student. Then he put his headphones on and refused to enter into any more discussions. By this time Alan actually had a pencil and paper out and was writing down equations. He said he was going home to work on it. He also told a joke about a mathematician, a physicist amd an engineer talking about prime numbers in a pub. It wasn't funny, or maybe I didn't understand it.

Anyway, go here and have a look at this explanation if you want to start a fight in your own office.

***

It's Halloween today of course. We're supposed to come wearing black, so I did. There are some odd characters in the office who really went to town on the outfits. Someone is dressed as Batman. What's that all about? A witch in the kitchen commented on my black tie and I told her I was also wearing black leather underwear with studs, on the inside, and she went away giggling. It's not true of course. The studs are on the outside.

I was drawn to the Telegraph headline "Vicar went to hospital with potato stuck in bottom". According to the article, "The clergyman, in his 50s, told nurses he had been hanging curtains when he fell backwards on to his kitchen table. He happened to be nude at the time of the mishap, said the vicar, who insisted he had not been playing a sex game".

Come on, stop laughing, it could happen to anyone.

The article goes on to list a number of other articles extracted by the hospital from various arses. Apparently a Sheffield hospital spokesman said, "Like all busy hospitals we do see some unusual accidents. But our staff deal with them in a discreet, professional and kind way."

Not so discreet that they keep it out of the newspapers apparently.