[HN Gopher] Everyone should learn the slide rule (2021)
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Everyone should learn the slide rule (2021)
Author : leonry
Score : 81 points
Date : 2022-04-24 12:06 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (scottlocklin.wordpress.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (scottlocklin.wordpress.com)
| throw0101a wrote:
| The Professor Herning YT channel has a bunch of videos on both
| using slide rules and reviews/comparisons of various ones:
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/c/ProfessorHerning/videos
|
| The "Practical Slide Rule" [0] and "Basic slide rule theory and
| use" [1] playlists are a good intro:
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_qcL_RF-
| Zyu6ugp3E2nB...
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_qcL_RF-
| ZyvJYtIr9NRX...
| tgv wrote:
| Back in the day, when you asked an engineer, "How much is 2 x 2",
| he'd whip out his slide rule, and reply confidently:
| "approximately 3.99"
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Mathematician: "3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime. The result
| follows by induction."
|
| Physicist: "3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is
| experimental error..."
|
| Engineer: "3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is prime..."
|
| (Yeah, that old joke.)
| bombcar wrote:
| I've heard the last as "9 is prime enough".
| hereforphone wrote:
| Modern "Engineer": "What's prime, a new Javascript type?"
| leetrout wrote:
| Yep.
|
| I interviewed a few years ago and the screener asked me
| what I have been doing lately and I said mostly vanilla JS
| and he wanted to know all about that framework and if I
| would be able to use react
| tudorconstantin wrote:
| The tech lead I was working with a few years ago was
| absolutely certain vanilla js is a framework. To the
| point he dismissed some candidate for not knowing about
| it. I guess he was referring to this one http://vanilla-
| js.com/
| layer8 wrote:
| Vanilla JS is kinda the neutral element of the framework
| algebra.
| pwdisswordfish9 wrote:
| 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is Grothendieck
| prime...
| ravi-delia wrote:
| The Grothendieck primes are the composites which aren't
| obviously divisible by 2, 3, and 5. For most people, they
| start at 51.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| Can anyone recommend a slide rule?
|
| I recently bought a vernier caliper and prefer it over digital
| and dial. I feel more connected with the measurements i make,
| hard to describe but I suspect the idea is similiar to some of
| the points the author makes about using a manual slide rule.
|
| Few weeks ago I was watching a random video on YouTube published
| by matthias wendel and noticed the same vernier caliper sitting
| on the table in the background.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| There are a ton of used ones, many in near New or old stock
| condition, on ebay.
| derekp7 wrote:
| I prefer duplex slide rules (they have scales on both sides),
| as these give a wider range of calculations you can perform.
| Two of the models I personally like are the Post 1460 VersaLog,
| and the K&E 4081-3 Log-Log-Duplex-Decitrig (that one is fun to
| say). Specifically the older models that are made on mahogany
| coated with celluloid. Also there are various Pickett slide
| rules that are painted aluminum, these work really well too (I
| like the Pickett N-600 as a pocket slide rule).
|
| I also have a Faber-Castell 2/83n, I believe this model is
| Cliff Stoll's favorite one, however I find it a bit too busy
| for my aging eyes. It is really pretty to look at though.
|
| Too bad there isn't a big enough market for someone to make
| high quality replicas of classic slide rules, with modern
| machining techniques. I'd really like to see some laser etched
| metal rules.
| yeetsfromhellL2 wrote:
| I came in here to mention vernier calipers, I've gotten instant
| respect out of more than one machinist when I pulled them out
| instead of the digital calipers. They're fun to use too.
| randrews wrote:
| K&E Deci-Trig, or a Deci-Lon if you want something with a few
| more scales than that one. Those both give you the CF / DF
| "folded" scales, which are handy.
| jonsen wrote:
| Here they still make circular slide rules:
|
| https://www.sliderule.tokyo/products/list.php?category_id=30
| [deleted]
| bluenose69 wrote:
| The article is over-the-top in lots of ways, which is a shame,
| because slide rules really _are_ worth learning. I love them.
| Always have. I 've designed several for calculations that are
| specific to my research field.
|
| I would love to get my students using slide rules, but it's
| difficult to find physical ones for a reasonable price. Virtual
| slide rules, like those at
| http://www.antiquark.com/sliderule/sim/, are just not quite the
| same as a physical thing, which requires force to slide, and good
| light to see the details.
|
| I miss the days when you could go into any university bookstore
| and find sliderules in a wide range of prices. Another fond
| memory is watching my high-school teacher using a broomstick to
| move the slider on a giant sliderule he had above his blackboard.
|
| What do students miss, using calculators? 1. Concrete notions of
| the difficulty of measurement, each digit being much harder to
| obtain than its predecessor. 2. A intuitive feeling for the
| propagation of uncertainty. 3. The ability to carry the exponents
| of 10 in their head.
|
| Lacking this sort foundation seems to make it hard for people to
| connect their calculations, or numbers they read, with reality.
| This makes it hard to spot errors. It also makes it hard to
| remember things effectively. For example, I've found that
| students remember the mantissa of Avogadro's number correctly to
| 3 digits, but they have no idea on the exponent. The same goes
| for the speed of light in a vacuum. These errors were rare in the
| sliderule age, because it was imperative to keep the exponent in
| your head, as you worked through a calculation.
| buescher wrote:
| You could also get nicely printed (engraved I think) log paper
| (in a number of different scale configurations) for much
| longer. Also from K&E. Like printed Smith charts, though, it
| has gone the way of the dodo - people that need one just print
| out a pdf.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| You can get a perfectly good slide rule for less than 20 USD on
| Ebay including shipping. On Finn.no (a similar site in Norway)
| there are decent slide rules for half that price. A quick
| search of a random Craigslist, Central New Jersey also finds
| several in the sub 20 USD range.
|
| Sounds reasonable to me, what did you mean by a reasonable
| price?
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| All he's saying is that they were more widespread and
| generally available in places like mainstream stores and
| University bookstores.
|
| Are you really disagreeing with the best possible
| interpretation of this?
| jonsen wrote:
| > I would love to get my students using slide rules,
|
| "Slide Rule Loaner Program":
|
| https://sliderulemuseum.com/SR_Loaner.htm
| pwr-electronics wrote:
| Try nomograms instead - you can print them on paper, and they
| have one for just about everything.
| https://youtube.com/channel/UCOLYtsL4ge6QfaAvBDeG1IA
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" a physical thing, which requires force to slide, and good
| light to see the details"_
|
| I wonder if a slide rule could be made with glow-in-the-dark
| materials, so it could be read even in poor light.
| GeorgeTirebiter wrote:
| OK, who's going to make the under-the-scale LED lighting, and
| a motorized slide and then the number gets displayed in
| digits in an ambient display under the left bottom stationary
| part? A 2022 Slide Rule -- Modern Retro-Computing?
| nanna wrote:
| Anyone have tips on learning to use a side rule?
| ghaff wrote:
| The references others have given look pretty decent. It's not
| hard to do most stuff you likely have any real need to do. The
| main thing if you're used to calculators is that you have to
| handle exponents manually (in your head or on paper), your
| precision is limited, and you'll still need to do
| addition/subtraction in some other way.
| argiopetech wrote:
| I recommend Asimov's (yes, that Asimov) book, "An Easy
| Introduction to the Slide Rule." I was lucky to pick up a
| physical copy as a young man, but it appears it's available as
| a PDF online.
| pkaye wrote:
| This seems to be a good tutorial.
|
| https://sliderulemuseum.com/SR_Course.htm
| rjsw wrote:
| I have a 3" pocket slide rule that belonged to my grandfather.
| ben_bai wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIQQvxSXLhI
| bigbillheck wrote:
| > It's why engineers will do things like build a cantilever beam
| which requires finite element analysis instead of just building a
| fucking bridge.
|
| Because bridges never collapsed due to faulty design before
| finite elements (Please ignore
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_Bridge#Second_design_an...
| and
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironworkers_Memorial_Second_Na...
| and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma_Narrows_Bridge_(1940)
| and you get the picture).
| kurupt213 wrote:
| It would probably be better for everyone if we learned to do
| math/science with the slide rule instead of a super powered HP
| graphing calculator. I kept my HP48GX from a sophomore in HS
| through university. I can't even use a regular calculator
| efficiently because I'm hardwired to use the stack and RPN's
| order of operation. When the 48 gave up the ghost, I bought the
| new primo one when I went back to school for PhD... mainly for
| basic calculations. I have the non graphical scientific HP
| calculator, but I like seeing the stack on the screen
| jonsen wrote:
| > I like seeing the stack on the screen
|
| So do I. Therefore I bought the DM42 from SwissMicros:
|
| https://www.swissmicros.com/products
| pfortuny wrote:
| A pity it is too snarky,
|
| I agree with the thesis (it would be very nice to have
| children/young people to know how to use it) but the tone is too
| negative.
|
| I am a big fan of teaching children to use an abacus, also.
| boxfire wrote:
| I read the article hoping to see examples of reasoning that the
| slide rule instilled.
|
| It reads more like a jealous rant than anything else. He fails
| to cite why those plans developments were so fast (hint it
| wasn't the magic of a slide rule.... It was a decade of design
| and test in products before the one with the name he assigned
| all credit to)
|
| He also has a sort of confirmation bias here, failing to note
| things we could not have possibly done without computers. Try a
| Martian sky crane landing without atmospheric modeling ha ha.
|
| Anyone have a reference for rules of thumb type thinking or
| other insights that come from slide rules?
| kec wrote:
| While this blog post is over the top, I think it is more
| charitably read as the real-engineer version of "your hobby
| project or 20 person startup is not a FAANG". Hobby projects
| or startups are not limited by their ability to scale with
| massive load spikes or coordinate thousands of code
| contributors, trendy solutions used by FAANG aren't going to
| help.
|
| Similarly science students, machinists and _most_ engineers
| working in the physical world are not NASA performing
| atmospheric models, they are not limited by their ability to
| perform arbitrary precision calculations. Giving a student a
| slide rule may help them build an intuition and deeper
| understanding than giving them a TI-89 or copy of Mathmatica.
| boxfire wrote:
| Moreover this doc makes it more apparent how much he waxes
| without real references: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/
| 20090007797/downloads/20...
|
| > Routine calculations were made using slide rules. More
| complex calculations, such as stress analysis, required
| Friden mechanical calculators.
|
| Fascinating read. No the SR-71 didn't appear out of thin air
| in a sprint of intensity unheard of on earth to date. Turns
| out after the U-2 taught us so much we said let's make a
| higher, faster U-3 and then spent a decade on that concept in
| a series of designs and tests.
|
| I really wish that this kind of cherry-picked mythos building
| fact wasn't what made half of what built the perception of
| good engineering to most of my present and future colleagues.
| bombcar wrote:
| The slide rule and the abacus both bring particular
| mathematical concepts to the forefront in ways that discussion
| alone doesn't do.
|
| A particular famous slide rule is the circular "flight
| computer" - E6B. Showing _and working out why it works_ to do
| various flight calculations can be instructive.
| ravi-delia wrote:
| Fluidly thinking of multiplication as addition of exponents
| is handy, but a slide rule won't do anything for that a few
| dozen exercises without a calculator couldn't.
| pfortuny wrote:
| I think that circular "computer" appears explicitly (as a
| photo) in the post. Thanks for the info!
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Yes, me too. I bought an abacus a while ago and learned to use
| it, what a joy.
|
| There are also some great documentaries on abacus education in
| Japan. It's amazing that the top abacus users stop needing an
| abacus and can do calculations just by imagining an abacus.
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