people fumbling through life...... - Page 3

ThermiteTermite · #31 02-19-2021, 07:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fazool

..........

There are frequent guitar stories like this, as well but my question is more general:

How do people stumble through life and not have the most basic, fundamental, rudimentary understanding of the physical world around them?

I'm not expecting everyone to be a physicist or an engineer, but understanding some really basic functions of the world you live in seems, to me, a pre-requisite for being a resident of this planet.

Who sez they all do? https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/s...y/accident.htm

The Growler · #32 02-19-2021, 08:11 PM

I've wondered the same thing Fazool. I came to the conclusion that most just don't actively/critically think and just go through life on autopilot.

Glennwillow · #33 02-20-2021, 11:37 AM

Even people who have a considerable understanding of the physical world do stupid things every now and then. It's amazing we don't get killed more often.

I have had some close calls myself over the years.

Going back about 40 years ago I designed a tractor driven propeller mixer for mixing up dairy manure lagoons. It was super efficient and worked really well, but I could never imagine the complications.

These dairy lagoons, not used much anymore, would get filled with dairy cow manure and form a thick crust on the surface, which makes them hard to pump out when it's time to get the manure spread out onto the fields as fertilizer. The prop mixer can break up all the crust and push fluid around until everything is homogenized and liquid again to make it pumpable. I designed this prop mixer for a tractor PTO (power takeoff) speed of 540 RPM for a tractor of 50 HP, max. We labeled the do-not-exceed limits on the unit. Trouble is, some farmers were using 250 HP tractors at 1000 RPM PTO speed to do the job faster. We had props coming back into our plant with all the propeller blades literally bent back on the hub from the stress they were never designed for. We stopped making those prop mixers.

The propeller was large and heavy, 26" diameter, with 3, 1/4" thick, shaped steel blades welded to a hub of 6" pipe. This hub had steel plates on each end. One of those plates had heavy threads for mounting the propeller to the drive shaft. I came out in the plant one day and Dan, one of the welders, had one of these propeller hubs heated up cherry red and was pounding on it with a heavy hammer, trying to get the wrecked propeller and hub off the threaded shaft because all that unexpected torque had plastically deformed the threads. I could see steam start to escape from the hub from the super-heated manure trapped inside the 6" hub. As the propeller started to spin off the shaft, I realized this was dangerous. I ran up to stop him, but I was too late and ran right into the middle of an explosion, which propelled that propeller off the shaft like a projectile from a howitzer. Dan and I were buried in a cloud of manure steam from the explosion while that hub went flying, bouncing off the ceiling 40 feet above us, and then banging around the plant floor. The whole plant was dead quiet as Dan and I disappeared in this steam cloud and in the large noise that stopped everyone in their tracks. Nobody was hurt, thank goodness, but they all thought Dan and I had been blown to pieces.

I actually wondered if I were dead, standing there in this gray cloud of steam, unable to see anything, no sound, but in a moment or two I decided I couldn't be dead because everything smelled so strongly of cow manure.

The farmers abusing those prop mixers should have known better, Dan should have known better, and I should have known better than running up to someone in a situation like that. We were incredibly lucky nobody was seriously hurt.

We can all do dumb stuff.

- Glenn

buddyhu · #34 02-20-2021, 05:51 PM

Modern life is complex. More and more, it seems inevitable that everyone will have areas where they are “fumbling through”, or periods in there life when they are under-functioning in a very obvious way.

Yes, some examples of the fumbling and under-functioning seem shocking.

Oh well.

rllink · #35 02-20-2021, 06:38 PM

It makes people feel smart to point out stupid things other people do and invoke the name of Darwin as if Darwin is going to legitimize them. But I've seen a lot of dead, dying, crippled, maimed, and just plain embarrassed people that thought they were smarter than they were when they got in over their head. At least stupid people have practice being stupid.

srick · #36 02-20-2021, 06:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Glennwillow

I actually wondered if I were dead, standing there in this gray cloud of steam, unable to see anything, no sound, but in a moment or two I decided I couldn't be dead because everything smelled so strongly of cow manure.

The farmers abusing those prop mixers should have known better, Dan should have known better, and I should have known better than running up to someone in a situation like that. We were incredibly lucky nobody was seriously hurt.

We can all do dumb stuff.

- Glenn

Glenn - I’m so glad this wasn’t your last hurrah, but reading your story brought to mind so many silly phrases that are just not up to AGF standards! So I’ve got a certain type of grin on my face right now.

Yup, we’re all guilty of stupidity. And I guess if we are still here, someone has been watching over us.

Best,

Rick

PS - you must have loved the silly bits on Tim Allen’s show, “Home Improvement”

Glennwillow · #37 02-20-2021, 08:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by srick

Glenn - I’m so glad this wasn’t your last hurrah, but reading your story brought to mind so many silly phrases that are just not up to AGF standards! So I’ve got a certain type of grin on my face right now.

Yup, we’re all guilty of stupidity. And I guess if we are still here, someone has been watching over us.

Best,

Rick

PS - you must have loved the silly bits on Tim Allen’s show, “Home Improvement”

I know about that grin very well Rick!

And yes, I loved that Tim Allen show!

Take care Rick!

- Glenn

Kerbie · #38 02-20-2021, 08:17 PM

Sounds rather other-worldly, Glenn!

Glad no one was hurt.

Glennwillow · #39 02-20-2021, 08:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kerbie

Sounds rather other-worldly, Glenn!

Glad no one was hurt.

Yeah, I am so glad no one was hurt, too.

It was so dangerous. I remember listening to that propeller hit the ceiling way above us and having no idea where that heavy thing was going to come down. It could have killed someone. Then I heard it hit the floor and spin around like an 80 pound spinning top. I was so very grateful that no one got hurt, even while I was wondering if I myself was in another world.

I have several stories like that which are pretty scary. I did a lot of adventurous things in my engineering career.

- Glenn

Kerbie · #40 02-20-2021, 08:25 PM

Glenn, when I read that, I was remembering the stories of props on planes coming apart in flight. The pieces can easily penetrate a fuselage and kill anyone inside they hit. Not good. You guys were very lucky.

Doons · #41 02-20-2021, 09:27 PM

Ron White said it best ; “You can’t fix stupid”.

hubcapsc · #42 02-20-2021, 09:32 PM

I couldn't be dead because everything smelled so strongly of cow manure.

Ida know... I think that's what it smells like in the... other... place

-Mike

TeleBluesMan · #43 02-20-2021, 09:48 PM

A few years ago my fifty-year-old friend was complaining about driving in slippery snow on his side street. His complaint was that the car had traction starting out, but then the automatic transmission would shift to the next gear and he would start sliding around. I had to explain to him that if you kept the transmission in "low" it would prevent it from up-shifting. He had no idea. He always just put it in "drive" or "reverse." He never thought about what those other settings were.

fazool · #44 02-20-2021, 10:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TeleBluesMan

A few years ago my fifty-year-old friend was complaining about driving in slippery snow on his side street. His complaint was that the car had traction starting out, but then the automatic transmission would shift to the next gear and he would start sliding around. I had to explain to him that if you kept the transmission in "low" it would prevent it from up-shifting. He had no idea. He always just put it in "drive" or "reverse." He never thought about what those other settings were.

Well except thats the wrong thing to do. When you are in lower gears you have lower top-speed but higher torque and the wheels slip. Thats why in a manual transmission you want to start in 2nd or 3rd gear. Winter mode on Volvo's start in 2nd gear.

You can do a burnout on dry pavement in 1st gear, not 4th, because you have more torque to make the wheels slip in a lower gear. In your friend's case it was simply too much gas pedal.

TeleBluesMan · #45 02-20-2021, 10:49 PM

Yes, you're correct, but with an auto trans he couldn't start in anything but the first gear. And it was easier for him to keep it in the low setting and keep his gas supply down than to try and moderate the gas flow to stop the up-shifting. And the point of the story is that after driving for more than 30 years he had no idea what the other transmission selections were for, or what they did.