I'm not terribly impressed with the writing style - it reminds me of the turgid science books of 30 years ago, complete with their infuriating habit of using technical terms several pages before explaining them. Here's an example from the first chapter:
The parallelogram law for the addition of forces can be expressed as follows:
If two forces acting on a point (that is, COPLANAR FORCES) are represented in magnitude and direction by the sides of a parallelogram drawn from the point, their resultant is represented by the diagonal drawn from the point.
It makes perfect sense, but only if (a) you can stay awake till the end of the sentence and (b) you've already worked out what it means by looking at the diagram.
When two equal but opposite forces, which are offset by a distance d, act tangentially on a wheel, they produce a turning effect or moment.
Two equal and opposite forces acting in this way constitute a couple. The turning effect of each force is called a torque.
What this means is: When two forces of equal magnitude, pushing in opposite directions, act on different parts of a wheel, the wheel turns. We say the forces are "coupled" or "a couple". The turning produced by each of the two forces is called it's Torque.
I have never understood why rotation motion is called a "moment", and after reading this, I still have no idea. I've asked my mother (who has several degrees in maths and physics) and my father (who studied this stuff for an abortive career in architecture), and neither of them know either.
A stray thought about the upcoming MOBO awards:
MOBO stands for "Music Of Black Origin", which I thought was another way of saying "Pop Music". That, plus rock, jazz, soul, reggae, blues and most forms of music not written for western orchestral instruments.
But no, "Black" music apparantly means music from "urban culture". Which means poor working class areas. So music made by people without money, is "Black".
I am frequently told that I need to "sort out my sleeping patterns" and "go to bed at a sensible time". Now, I thought a sensible time to go to sleep is when you're too tierd to stay awake, and a sensibe time to wake up is when you wake up naturally because don't need to sleep anymore. Reasonable, no?
Working when you've got the energy and sleeping when you haven't seems an emminently sensible way to work and sleep, removing both sleepless nights and productless work.
On the other hand, I'm starting to wonder whether it may be a good idea to train my brain to sleep when it's dark and wake when it's light. Seeing as I haven't been a teenager for 15 years, and whenever I try to function on two hours sleep I always find myself sleeping the other 6 sometime in the next 24. Seeing as the times I'm generally needed to do stuff (even by other night owls) are when the moon isn't visible.
Well, it's something to sleep on anyway.
Regarding sleep, I've been a classic insomniac in the past and the best thing I've learned that works is a schedule. Go to sleep at the same time and get up at the same time. If I vary it up I usually have problems.
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