Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Briefly

Last week during class I had some time to burn while I waited for the JB Weld to bond, a whole day actually since it take JB Weld a day to dry, but since I was there I asked Lisa if there was something I could do. She was in a cleaning mood so that is what I did. Specifically I was to disassemble a few engines and strip them of some useful parts and trash the rest.

The point of this whole thing is that the insides of engines are truly pieces of artwork. The detailing, the clearances of fractions of an inch, distances so small that the only thing that can possibly move between them is fluids, well it is all just majestic. It amazes me to think 200 years ago people were creating swords by beating steal with a hammer on an anvil and now we can make machines with specs accurate to thousandths of an inch. That fact that we can even create these machines at all and that they are as cheap and ubiquitous as they are is as miraculous and beautiful as anything I can imagine.

And I dumped them into the recycling bin because the pistons were worn.

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