(no subject)
Most of you know that I had an assignment to write a story for MATH2470 (no I am not joking)
The assignment was to write a witty an imaginitive story explaining how this particular scenario came about
A one metre cube of mild steel rests in the middle of an ice-skating rink, is blasted
with steam on its top surface, insulated on its northern face, convectively cooled by water
at 25◦C on its southern face and convectively cooled by air at 10◦C on its eastern and
western faces
Or, if you know the scenario already, you can jump straight in
Ethel the aardvark was trotting down the lane - trottety, trottety, trot - when the most unusual sight presented itself. There was a large piece of what appeared to be steel in the field. The lump of steel wasn’t any normal shape; it looked kind of like a half melted icecube.
‘Hmmm, I wonder what that’s all about,’ Ethel thought to herself, and walked over to see.
When she arrived she saw that the block was covered in thousands of little black ants, and the block seemed to be growing.
‘Yum,’ she thought, ‘Lunch!’ Ethel then proceeded to start eating the ants, who began to flee in terror.
Once Ethel had her fill of the delicious ants (and delicious they were) she started on her way. She had to hurry because she was late for the bus. She had to get home soon - she needed to get ready for the date she had with a particularly handsome Quantity Surveyor, called John, she had met the week before.
Whilst Ethel and John were enjoying a particularly tasty carbonara, with an exquisite glass of 2003 Château Grillet Viognier, the ants were frantically calculating the death toll from Ethel’s midday banquet.
But these were no ordinary ants - they were a hyper intelligent, pan-dimensional species of steel working ants. They had been toiling for thousands of generations to build the monument to their god, Latrielle, a huge steel cube so big that a new unit, the metre, had to be developed just for the sheer size of it.
Adam Ant sighed. He had lost all of his family today, when the aardvark demon attacked. His clan were assigned to the top tier of the construction project after his great, great, great, great Grandfather had been found listening to 5ive.
‘Why,’ Adam simpered, ‘why did he have to listen to 5ive? Why couldn’t he listen to real Antmusic?’
From the next room Adam heard a voice suggesting that some music might help with morale. The radio switched on and the muffled sounds of Elton John reached his ears, ‘Don’t Do it!’ Adam cried, too late, and his cry drifted into the night. It echoed over a tiny figure who began to dance, causing a wild dog to howl. His cries crossed over a wharf, where a man was discussing a price with the ferry man.
Ages passed, the monument was completed, and Ethel had a wonderful time with John. They decided to meet next Wednesday to go shopping and have buttered scones for tea.
Don Boris yawned - a not altogether uncommon occurrence, considering the fact that he was a 3-toed sloth, widely regarded as the second laziest creature on the entire planet (after the teenage human male).
Don Boris was no ordinary 3-toed sloth. He was the head of the 3-toed sloth mafia, an organised crime syndicate so lazy that they had not, infact, organised a crime in a number of years. Boris did not know how many years, simply because he was too lazy to count. It was this lack of crime that had landed him in his current predicament.
Don Boris looked around, the extra 9 vertebrae in his neck allowing him to survey the entire room, albeit slowly. He was at the biannual conference of mafiosos, this was the first time he had ever made it to the conference, as it was his turn to host it.
‘Don Boris,’ A large Italian gentleman began, ‘it has come to our attention that the 3-toed sloth mafia has done nothing in the last 8 years! This is unacceptable, and unless you commit some form of felony in the near future we will revoke your mafiahood.’
Boris looked nonplussed at this pronouncement; he yawned again.
‘That means you will have to get a real job,’ a blonde-haired Russian gentlemen pointed out from behind a large bottle of vodka.
‘And a haircut,’ added the American with a mole on his face and a rather raspy voice.
‘A haircut? A real job?’ Boris wheezed. His species were too lazy to develop full vocal chords when they evolved, so a wheeze was all he could manage. ‘I can’t have that! Gentlemen, if you would excuse me,’ Boris turned and quickly headed for the door, as fast as his legs would carry him (which wasn’t particularly fast, at 0.15mph).
After 20 mins Boris managed to get to the door and flee the room. Once he managed to locate his best henchmen, Marco and Mario, he had his daily siesta.
A number of hours later Boris was talking to Marco and Mario. ‘We need to do something boys, or we’ll have to get real jobs,’ Boris suppressed a shudder, which wasn’t difficult as the 3-toed sloth is unable to shiver, let alone shudder.
‘We could do some of that extortion stuff,’ Mario suggested.
‘Who’d we extort, huh, the aardvark?’ Marco replied.
‘Okay then how about we nick something?’
‘Well it’s not really mafia style, but it’s still a crime,’ Boris interjected, ‘that ought to do it. Any ideas as to what to steal?’
‘Well I heard the aardvark talk about this cube thing just outside of town,’ Mario suggested.
‘Oooohhh! Mario and the aardvark!’ Marco grinned, ‘well a nod’s as good as a wink to a blind bat, ay boss? Know what I mean? Know what I mean?’
‘Tell me more about this cube Mario, is it guarded?’ Boris was intrigued, but then even the laziest creature is able to summon interest when threatened with real work (see educ3570-ploys for Substitute Teachers course notes).
‘Ain’t got no guards boss’ Mario informed Boris, somehow sounding even less eloquent than usual.
‘That’s our kind of object to steal, no guards or nothing! Let’s go boys,’ Boris announced, and headed for the car. He knew that if they walked, not only would someone else get to the cube first, but their time would run out and they’d be kicked out of the mafia.
The car was a Trabant from the mid 1980’s, a unique being in the world of cars. Whilst being the first car to ever be made from recycled materials, it also managed to release 7 times more greenhouse gasses than any other car from the same period.
As the car was able to travel significantly faster than the sloths they soon arrived at the field. The problem with having a sloth - especially Boris who manages to be lazier than most - driving your car is slow reflexes. Because of this they didn’t so much arrive at the field as careen over the ha-ha (a unique combination of a fence sunk into a ditch), straight into a large puddle of industrial solvent.
How the solvent got to be in such a large puddle in this particular field remains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of our time; any one with information is urged to call the information hotline on 1800 267 937.
But what you may ask, were the consequences of the Trabant landing in the puddle? The consequences of a resin-cotton based car body landing in strong industrial solvent at speed were interesting to say the least. The front end of the Trabant dissolved into a goopy paste, which continued to travel across the field and hit the side of the steel cube. After superficial testing this paste was found to be perfectly insulating.
Boris and his henchmen on the other hand, fared marginally better. Their advantage was that the fur of the 3-toed sloth doesn’t dissolve in industrial solvents, mainly because it is too lazy. They were, however, catapulted into a cecropia tree, and being too lazy to move, they have lived there ever since.
Frank the Goat had never gotten along with Herman the Hermit. Herman had the better crag, bathed less, and didn’t have horns. Frank hated his horns. Frank had been quietly waging war upon Herman for a long time now, eating his pants at all available opportunities.
Frank was no ordinary goat; he was, in fact, a magic goat. He became magic when he accidentally ate a mysterious fungus he found. He had gotten a little sick, and started sneezing, and every time he sneezed he found himself in a different location.
Unbeknownst to Frank, Herman was the third cousin twice removed of Tim the Enchanter, and so was also magic. Herman specialised in water; he slept with fishes - quite literally, as his bed was often full of sleeping fish. It meant that it was easy to find dinner, but it did make it hard for him to hold down a steady relationship.
Frank sat on a log, he was busy scheming, preparing for his next attack against the hermit. So far all he had decided was that it would take place on a dark and stormy night.
Frank sneezed, and the world shifted.
Frank blinked. He felt rather odd. He couldn’t move. He strained his neck, trying to look around only to find that he was stuck fast inside a large block of steel, only his head and neck protruding. This is a wholly unnatural position for a goat, even a magical one like Frank, and thus was also very painful.
An idea started to form in the small brain portion of Frank’s brain that wasn’t currently focused on his sticky predicament. ‘I do believe I have a cunning plan,’ Frank announced to himself, not realising that he had spoken out loud.
‘How Cunning?’ came a wheezing voice from the tree. The voice belonged to Boris, though Frank didn’t know this at the time (actually frank still doesn’t know…).
‘So cunning you could stick a tail on it and call it a weasel,’ Frank replied, believing that he had finally gone insane and that it was time to lay off the mushrooms.
‘That is cunning,’ a third voice remarked. Frank decided that he really, really had to lay off those mushrooms.
Frank felt a itching in the back of his nose. He knew what that meant - he was going to sneeze. Frank also decided that he hated fields with large puddles of industrial solvent. Not of course, that he could see the puddle; he was after all facing the complete wrong direction.
Frank sneezed, and it was a rather large sneeze. The world shifted.
It was, in fact, large enough to shake the very foundations of the Universe, distracting her from the daytime soaps. When she saw Frank the Goat-Steel-Cube-Thing flying past in countless of sub-atomic particles, Mary (for that was her name) was justifiably angry. She had set down the rules for a reason, and it wasn’t so they could be broken.
Mary clicked her fingers, or rather she tried to click her fingers. Clicking was one of those things she never mastered, like whistling. It was rather embarrassing really, The Girls never let her live it down.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ She demanded of Frank, who had rather miraculously appeared, whole, in front of her.
Frank looked sheepish, ‘Oh no, what now?’ he groaned, though to the regular person it sounded more like, ‘Baaaaaaah!’
‘What do you think you’re doing young man?’ Mary continued, putting her hands on her hips, and glaring at Frank imperiously.
‘Well my girlfriend and I….’ Frank started.
‘You don’t have a girlfriend!’ Mary interrupted, you can’t hide things from the universe.
‘I do so have a girlfriend,’ Frank insisted.
‘You’re just imagining it! She doesn’t even exist!’
‘My girlfriend has existence! She has loads of existence. Well I don’t mean to say she’s huge or anything. She has existence somewhere between completely imaginary, and a truck!’
‘Riiight!’ Mary looked unconvinced.
‘Oh all right then, I have no idea how this happened, I sneezed and this is what happened.’
‘Well let’s see about getting you out of there.’ Mary waved her hand quite lazily towards Frank, who then sneezed twice. The world shifted.
When Frank came too, he found he could move again and was no longer a sheep. Whilst he was quite excited at his new found freedom, he was concerned that he might be developing an allergy. He made a doctor’s appointment for 3pm the next afternoon and then went and started a rather successful blogging company.
If Frank had spared his war with Herman even a brief thought, he would have been quite pleased, because the by now infamous block of steel was sitting in a rather obstructive location for our Hermit friend.
The block of steel had, rather inconveniently, landed on Herman’s fresh water supply. Herman, though he was good at magic, and even better at magic with water, still had to drink fresh water.
Herman’s eyes started to bulge and the veins near his temples stated to pulse violently, rather like a cartoon water hose, when he saw the steel. He raised his arms, his bangles rattling, and approached the cube of steel, looking for the life of him like an Egyptian.
‘Wollar-mena-gorrrrikad-nu-faarn-ook-nee!’ he cried, having absolutely no idea what those words meant, but liking how they rolled off his tongue.
As if by magic, which in truth it actually was, one of the faces of the cube seemed to be covered in steam, steam originating out of nowhere (well not no where, but Herman had never studied that hard in his college days and failed his quantum physics course).
This wasn’t the result that Herman was after; he slumped to the ground and began to sulk. Simultaneously (and purely co-incidentally) the cube was launched into the air by a great stream of water. Herman watched the cube until it disappeared from sight. He was happy.
The cube Flew through the air, still being pushed by the jet of water. It sailed over a 747, where the only passenger who saw it was a 4 year old boy, Eugene, who nobody believed because his eyes were closed whenever he spoke to them.
Eventually the cube started to return to the earth, where it plummeted through the roof of a skating rink, just missing some of the local birdlife. It landed in the middle of the ice, the insulated face pointing north, the jet of water hitting the southern face, the steam still striking the top face and leaving the other two faces to be whipped by the wind.
The American owners of the rink were, for obvious reasons, rather unhappy with the large hole in the roof, and the large block of steel in the middle of the rink. But despite much effort, they were unable to sue anyone; it is after all rather difficult to prosecute the universe, even when you know her name is Mary.
The assignment was to write a witty an imaginitive story explaining how this particular scenario came about
A one metre cube of mild steel rests in the middle of an ice-skating rink, is blasted
with steam on its top surface, insulated on its northern face, convectively cooled by water
at 25◦C on its southern face and convectively cooled by air at 10◦C on its eastern and
western faces
Or, if you know the scenario already, you can jump straight in
Ethel the aardvark was trotting down the lane - trottety, trottety, trot - when the most unusual sight presented itself. There was a large piece of what appeared to be steel in the field. The lump of steel wasn’t any normal shape; it looked kind of like a half melted icecube.
‘Hmmm, I wonder what that’s all about,’ Ethel thought to herself, and walked over to see.
When she arrived she saw that the block was covered in thousands of little black ants, and the block seemed to be growing.
‘Yum,’ she thought, ‘Lunch!’ Ethel then proceeded to start eating the ants, who began to flee in terror.
Once Ethel had her fill of the delicious ants (and delicious they were) she started on her way. She had to hurry because she was late for the bus. She had to get home soon - she needed to get ready for the date she had with a particularly handsome Quantity Surveyor, called John, she had met the week before.
Whilst Ethel and John were enjoying a particularly tasty carbonara, with an exquisite glass of 2003 Château Grillet Viognier, the ants were frantically calculating the death toll from Ethel’s midday banquet.
But these were no ordinary ants - they were a hyper intelligent, pan-dimensional species of steel working ants. They had been toiling for thousands of generations to build the monument to their god, Latrielle, a huge steel cube so big that a new unit, the metre, had to be developed just for the sheer size of it.
Adam Ant sighed. He had lost all of his family today, when the aardvark demon attacked. His clan were assigned to the top tier of the construction project after his great, great, great, great Grandfather had been found listening to 5ive.
‘Why,’ Adam simpered, ‘why did he have to listen to 5ive? Why couldn’t he listen to real Antmusic?’
From the next room Adam heard a voice suggesting that some music might help with morale. The radio switched on and the muffled sounds of Elton John reached his ears, ‘Don’t Do it!’ Adam cried, too late, and his cry drifted into the night. It echoed over a tiny figure who began to dance, causing a wild dog to howl. His cries crossed over a wharf, where a man was discussing a price with the ferry man.
Ages passed, the monument was completed, and Ethel had a wonderful time with John. They decided to meet next Wednesday to go shopping and have buttered scones for tea.
Don Boris yawned - a not altogether uncommon occurrence, considering the fact that he was a 3-toed sloth, widely regarded as the second laziest creature on the entire planet (after the teenage human male).
Don Boris was no ordinary 3-toed sloth. He was the head of the 3-toed sloth mafia, an organised crime syndicate so lazy that they had not, infact, organised a crime in a number of years. Boris did not know how many years, simply because he was too lazy to count. It was this lack of crime that had landed him in his current predicament.
Don Boris looked around, the extra 9 vertebrae in his neck allowing him to survey the entire room, albeit slowly. He was at the biannual conference of mafiosos, this was the first time he had ever made it to the conference, as it was his turn to host it.
‘Don Boris,’ A large Italian gentleman began, ‘it has come to our attention that the 3-toed sloth mafia has done nothing in the last 8 years! This is unacceptable, and unless you commit some form of felony in the near future we will revoke your mafiahood.’
Boris looked nonplussed at this pronouncement; he yawned again.
‘That means you will have to get a real job,’ a blonde-haired Russian gentlemen pointed out from behind a large bottle of vodka.
‘And a haircut,’ added the American with a mole on his face and a rather raspy voice.
‘A haircut? A real job?’ Boris wheezed. His species were too lazy to develop full vocal chords when they evolved, so a wheeze was all he could manage. ‘I can’t have that! Gentlemen, if you would excuse me,’ Boris turned and quickly headed for the door, as fast as his legs would carry him (which wasn’t particularly fast, at 0.15mph).
After 20 mins Boris managed to get to the door and flee the room. Once he managed to locate his best henchmen, Marco and Mario, he had his daily siesta.
A number of hours later Boris was talking to Marco and Mario. ‘We need to do something boys, or we’ll have to get real jobs,’ Boris suppressed a shudder, which wasn’t difficult as the 3-toed sloth is unable to shiver, let alone shudder.
‘We could do some of that extortion stuff,’ Mario suggested.
‘Who’d we extort, huh, the aardvark?’ Marco replied.
‘Okay then how about we nick something?’
‘Well it’s not really mafia style, but it’s still a crime,’ Boris interjected, ‘that ought to do it. Any ideas as to what to steal?’
‘Well I heard the aardvark talk about this cube thing just outside of town,’ Mario suggested.
‘Oooohhh! Mario and the aardvark!’ Marco grinned, ‘well a nod’s as good as a wink to a blind bat, ay boss? Know what I mean? Know what I mean?’
‘Tell me more about this cube Mario, is it guarded?’ Boris was intrigued, but then even the laziest creature is able to summon interest when threatened with real work (see educ3570-ploys for Substitute Teachers course notes).
‘Ain’t got no guards boss’ Mario informed Boris, somehow sounding even less eloquent than usual.
‘That’s our kind of object to steal, no guards or nothing! Let’s go boys,’ Boris announced, and headed for the car. He knew that if they walked, not only would someone else get to the cube first, but their time would run out and they’d be kicked out of the mafia.
The car was a Trabant from the mid 1980’s, a unique being in the world of cars. Whilst being the first car to ever be made from recycled materials, it also managed to release 7 times more greenhouse gasses than any other car from the same period.
As the car was able to travel significantly faster than the sloths they soon arrived at the field. The problem with having a sloth - especially Boris who manages to be lazier than most - driving your car is slow reflexes. Because of this they didn’t so much arrive at the field as careen over the ha-ha (a unique combination of a fence sunk into a ditch), straight into a large puddle of industrial solvent.
How the solvent got to be in such a large puddle in this particular field remains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of our time; any one with information is urged to call the information hotline on 1800 267 937.
But what you may ask, were the consequences of the Trabant landing in the puddle? The consequences of a resin-cotton based car body landing in strong industrial solvent at speed were interesting to say the least. The front end of the Trabant dissolved into a goopy paste, which continued to travel across the field and hit the side of the steel cube. After superficial testing this paste was found to be perfectly insulating.
Boris and his henchmen on the other hand, fared marginally better. Their advantage was that the fur of the 3-toed sloth doesn’t dissolve in industrial solvents, mainly because it is too lazy. They were, however, catapulted into a cecropia tree, and being too lazy to move, they have lived there ever since.
Frank the Goat had never gotten along with Herman the Hermit. Herman had the better crag, bathed less, and didn’t have horns. Frank hated his horns. Frank had been quietly waging war upon Herman for a long time now, eating his pants at all available opportunities.
Frank was no ordinary goat; he was, in fact, a magic goat. He became magic when he accidentally ate a mysterious fungus he found. He had gotten a little sick, and started sneezing, and every time he sneezed he found himself in a different location.
Unbeknownst to Frank, Herman was the third cousin twice removed of Tim the Enchanter, and so was also magic. Herman specialised in water; he slept with fishes - quite literally, as his bed was often full of sleeping fish. It meant that it was easy to find dinner, but it did make it hard for him to hold down a steady relationship.
Frank sat on a log, he was busy scheming, preparing for his next attack against the hermit. So far all he had decided was that it would take place on a dark and stormy night.
Frank sneezed, and the world shifted.
Frank blinked. He felt rather odd. He couldn’t move. He strained his neck, trying to look around only to find that he was stuck fast inside a large block of steel, only his head and neck protruding. This is a wholly unnatural position for a goat, even a magical one like Frank, and thus was also very painful.
An idea started to form in the small brain portion of Frank’s brain that wasn’t currently focused on his sticky predicament. ‘I do believe I have a cunning plan,’ Frank announced to himself, not realising that he had spoken out loud.
‘How Cunning?’ came a wheezing voice from the tree. The voice belonged to Boris, though Frank didn’t know this at the time (actually frank still doesn’t know…).
‘So cunning you could stick a tail on it and call it a weasel,’ Frank replied, believing that he had finally gone insane and that it was time to lay off the mushrooms.
‘That is cunning,’ a third voice remarked. Frank decided that he really, really had to lay off those mushrooms.
Frank felt a itching in the back of his nose. He knew what that meant - he was going to sneeze. Frank also decided that he hated fields with large puddles of industrial solvent. Not of course, that he could see the puddle; he was after all facing the complete wrong direction.
Frank sneezed, and it was a rather large sneeze. The world shifted.
It was, in fact, large enough to shake the very foundations of the Universe, distracting her from the daytime soaps. When she saw Frank the Goat-Steel-Cube-Thing flying past in countless of sub-atomic particles, Mary (for that was her name) was justifiably angry. She had set down the rules for a reason, and it wasn’t so they could be broken.
Mary clicked her fingers, or rather she tried to click her fingers. Clicking was one of those things she never mastered, like whistling. It was rather embarrassing really, The Girls never let her live it down.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ She demanded of Frank, who had rather miraculously appeared, whole, in front of her.
Frank looked sheepish, ‘Oh no, what now?’ he groaned, though to the regular person it sounded more like, ‘Baaaaaaah!’
‘What do you think you’re doing young man?’ Mary continued, putting her hands on her hips, and glaring at Frank imperiously.
‘Well my girlfriend and I….’ Frank started.
‘You don’t have a girlfriend!’ Mary interrupted, you can’t hide things from the universe.
‘I do so have a girlfriend,’ Frank insisted.
‘You’re just imagining it! She doesn’t even exist!’
‘My girlfriend has existence! She has loads of existence. Well I don’t mean to say she’s huge or anything. She has existence somewhere between completely imaginary, and a truck!’
‘Riiight!’ Mary looked unconvinced.
‘Oh all right then, I have no idea how this happened, I sneezed and this is what happened.’
‘Well let’s see about getting you out of there.’ Mary waved her hand quite lazily towards Frank, who then sneezed twice. The world shifted.
When Frank came too, he found he could move again and was no longer a sheep. Whilst he was quite excited at his new found freedom, he was concerned that he might be developing an allergy. He made a doctor’s appointment for 3pm the next afternoon and then went and started a rather successful blogging company.
If Frank had spared his war with Herman even a brief thought, he would have been quite pleased, because the by now infamous block of steel was sitting in a rather obstructive location for our Hermit friend.
The block of steel had, rather inconveniently, landed on Herman’s fresh water supply. Herman, though he was good at magic, and even better at magic with water, still had to drink fresh water.
Herman’s eyes started to bulge and the veins near his temples stated to pulse violently, rather like a cartoon water hose, when he saw the steel. He raised his arms, his bangles rattling, and approached the cube of steel, looking for the life of him like an Egyptian.
‘Wollar-mena-gorrrrikad-nu-faarn-ook-nee!’ he cried, having absolutely no idea what those words meant, but liking how they rolled off his tongue.
As if by magic, which in truth it actually was, one of the faces of the cube seemed to be covered in steam, steam originating out of nowhere (well not no where, but Herman had never studied that hard in his college days and failed his quantum physics course).
This wasn’t the result that Herman was after; he slumped to the ground and began to sulk. Simultaneously (and purely co-incidentally) the cube was launched into the air by a great stream of water. Herman watched the cube until it disappeared from sight. He was happy.
The cube Flew through the air, still being pushed by the jet of water. It sailed over a 747, where the only passenger who saw it was a 4 year old boy, Eugene, who nobody believed because his eyes were closed whenever he spoke to them.
Eventually the cube started to return to the earth, where it plummeted through the roof of a skating rink, just missing some of the local birdlife. It landed in the middle of the ice, the insulated face pointing north, the jet of water hitting the southern face, the steam still striking the top face and leaving the other two faces to be whipped by the wind.
The American owners of the rink were, for obvious reasons, rather unhappy with the large hole in the roof, and the large block of steel in the middle of the rink. But despite much effort, they were unable to sue anyone; it is after all rather difficult to prosecute the universe, even when you know her name is Mary.