Mo’s back, and is all about formula today.
I’ve never been good at Maths. I kept my medium grades all through High School, and no amount of work on the matter could change those. I begrudgingly kept up the work, though, while thinking “why am I doing this – I’ll never have any use for it!”
Well, that’s where I was wrong.
For one, I had plenty use for maths when I designed this place. How many square meters of roof tiles do you need, and how do you work that out when you don’t know the width of the roof? Out of its hiding place, deep in the meanders of my brain, came Pythagoras’ formula (a²+b²=c²), a,b and c being the sides of a triangle. Work out, if you will, the amount of insulation needed (in cubic metres), if the outer walls and floors are 25 cms thick and the inner walls 15 cms. While you’re at it, find out the number of tiles you need for the floor, and the amount of wood paneling too. I used my share of formulas, I can tell you…
Now, I’ve got 4 teens, all with the same non-relationship with maths that I had. What surprises me is that it’s been 27 years, but I still remember how to do equations with a couple of unknowns, the workings of + and – inside and out of a paranthesis and the mysteries of fractions. Formulas for surfaces and volumes are there; percentage, exponential growth, you name it – I can actually help them, and who would have thought that back in 1981…
Now, physics is another matter. The formula I’ve used as an illustration above is just that – an illustration. I guess I could tell you what the letters mean, if pushed. I’m not sure, though, what comes out of it. An old man with big white hair, perhaps?
Stumble it!
