Words of Wisdom

a.k.a. lessons in life & aerodynamics

[Engineering] is like a cosmic egg ... we have just enough information to survive.
If I could have been a fly on the wall when they developed potential flow theory ...
Were you to tell me that you could take a source and a sink and bring them together in a limiting process and let their strengths go to infinity, I would have said, "Man, what were you smoking?".
[Computing] is almost like magic.
If I could have bought stock in Laplace's equation years ago ...
It's tough being in 2-D[imensions] ... you feel kind of squished in.
This effect has a lousy name: "downwash". It sounds like "mouthwash".
Drag is a drag.

The key to composite materials is sex.
In order to get your name on something, it has to be very important or very hard. Have you ever heard of the "Springer solution"? That should tell you something about Springer.
We cannot solve it so we guess the answer. Why can we guess the answer? It's a free country!
In all my years of teaching, I have never required a calculator to be used on my exams. Do you think I'm going to start today? Could be.
So I asked the commander of the [nuclear] submarine if I could see the room with the little red button .... Why [did I get to see it]? Because I know about stresses and strains.
Edge delamination is a very big problem in industry. So you know what they do? They tape it with a duct tape ... you know Scotch tape.
[Composites manufacturing] is just cooking: pizza ovens and sausages. That's all there is to it.

P.S. If you didn't find any of these amusing, you're probably not a real geek.

Nathan's Macquote pageSUX / nscan@leland.stanford.edu / revised 3/7/97