School (Was: Lisa C and Lisa FORTRAN

When I was at school (equivalent of 'high school'), I had to get speical permision to read books at random in the library. Go figure... Oh, I love it when they do that _provided I get to go to the library sale. I've got so interesting books that way for peanuts... Argh! FWIW, I still routinely use books on electronics written 70 or more years ago. And I wouldn't want to be without K&R. I am not an astronomer, but can you please explain to me how what you call a particular object (wheter Pluto is a planet or not) has any effect on things like planetary motion? Last time I looked Newton's laws didn't depend on the name you gave to the object ... Oh, I didn't learn this in the lessons. I learnt it while I was at school. By doing things like carefully removing and dismantling locks after school and figuring out what the differences were. I doubt there was a teacher in the place who had any idea about even very elementary locksmithing.. Or any other form of engineering for that matter. In general the teachers, at least in phusics and maths (where i had enough knowledge to realise what was going on) have a very elementary grasp of the subject. I have forgotten the number of arguments I had with them, and the numebr of times they turned out to be totally wrong. But perhaps this will illustrate it. I was given the question 'Describ a method of measuring the value of a capacitor' (No, this is not a trick quesiton, 'value' means what it normally means and is measured in farads...) Now I had a good idea what he was expecting, since there was a totally useless method described in the standard textbook involving a vibrating contact. The fact that it had fundamental systematic errors bothered me. So I described the simple AC bridge circuit -- 2 capacitors, 2 resistors in a breidge. Result : Zero marks with the comment 'That's not a measurement, it's a comparison'. Now, to this day I would like to see a definition of measurement that does not involve comaprison to a standard. And in general the most accurate methods involve comparison to a standard of the same type as the qunatity being measured. But anyway... I wish I'd had 'Measuements in Radio Engineering' back then. It starts of with 'measuements of circuit constants at low frequencies' and gives many bridge cirucits. Any schoolteacher who things he knows more about electrical measuremnts than Fred Terman is almost cerainly mistaken (I assume everyone hwere knows who that is...) I think a large LART is certainly needed ;-) Err, yes... Only the other day I had a physics teacehr inflicted on me who assured me he had seen a DC motor with no commutator or other polarity-revesing device running off a single cell. And now, it wasn't Barlow's wheel or something similar (essentially the homopolar motor). He claimed a normal round rotor. I am still trying to work out what he saw... I had a misspent childhood playing with such things. Which has been quite useful,m actually... Rewinding small motors doesn't worry me at all. Just as well sine my HP9125 (see, it's almost on-topic) had a pair of burnt-out motors in it when I got it. Not any more... -tony