(j3.2006) Retro cool to go with your Fortran compiler

[Toon Moene]

Kurt W Hirchert wrote:

> P.S. Personally, I always felt that the typical straight slide rule was 
> good for 3 digits on the right end and 4 on the left, 

Once, in my career of remedial math/science teaching, I was hit by a 
curriculum that forced my student (OK, strictly speaking it was 
additional material) to study Napier (they graciously had translated the 
Latin into Dutch, to not make it *too* hard).

 From log tables (which I have at home - a legacy of my grandfather, 
from 1923), it went into the discussion of slide rules (this was my own 
digression - I simply wanted to show her that these techniques were 
still used in the 1960's).

Unfortunately, I didn't *have* any slide rules at the time - so I just 
made one, by splitting a piece of paper and using a normal ruler to make 
a log scale:

10log2 = 0.3
10log3 = 0.5

Therefore:

10log4 = 0.6
10log5 = 0.7
10log6 = 0.8
10log8 = 0.9

Once I had shown that putting the 1 of one of the "rulers" on top of the 
2 of the second one, that you could read "6" below the "3" of the top 
ruler, she was convinced (of course, I showed more examples).

-- 
Toon Moene - e-mail: toon at moene.org - phone: +31 346 214290
Saturnushof 14, 3738 XG  Maartensdijk, The Netherlands
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