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Cake day: October 25th, 2024

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  • The last 4 years of my working life, I taught some math in my small rural local school. I introduced a tradition of calculating Pi from scratch by various “silly” means. All shamelessly stolen from Matt Parker of Standup Maths fame on Youtube. The students, (4th through 8th grade), were always highly entertained and may have accidentally learned some math…

    When you least expect it, Pi is there.



  • As a retired mechanical engineer, the joke is that we don’t really remember the value of Pi, but we think it’s somewhere around 3. But maybe we should use 4 just to be safe.

    In any case, I have to remember 3.14 because one of my Daughters was born on Pi Day. Which, according her, is the second most important day of the year, just right behind Christmas Day, when she was growing up. So when she got into high school that meant that we had to bring enough pie to be served in each of her math classes on that day. (Oddly enough she prefers cheese cake over pie on her Birthday).

    Now I’m not saying being born on Pi Day influenced her life any, but she has a PhD in Mech Engineering.





  • Those machines are referred to as slitters. I designed and built 2 for 3M Abrasive division back in the 1990’s. Talk about a process that involves less than reliable hardware, (I never met an air bar or pneumatic web sensor I didn’t hate), and enough wishful thinking to achieve the speeds 3M wanted them to run at that would make an Alchemist proud. I was constantly amazed that my designs even worked at all.


  • Chocks are always fashionable, (and one should always be fashionable), but operators sometimes don’t bother during a quick move. And those rolls often get a flat spot due to the weight when you set them down so they are hard to get rolling on a level surface.

    Even large rolls rolls of sheet steel don’t roll easily on a level floor.