🚀 go-pugleaf

Ray Depew (r...@fc.hp.com) wrote:
: Warren Young (tan...@cyberport.com) wrote:

: : So, a question: what is it that will cause a disk to go bad in the
: : five minutes it takes me to drive to work?  It sure as heck isn't
: : magnetism.  :-/  I can't count the number of times I've gone home to
: : grab something, put it on a floppy, drove to work, and couldn't read
: : the disk.

: I'm not sure where I live, but I'll ask anyway:  do you by any chance
: cross the equator on your drive to work?

Oh, THAT'S RIGHT!  Hard drives and floppy drives spin the other way
south of the equator!  A side-effect of this is that they can't be
used *at* the equator, because they don't spin at all.  You've also
got to watch out if you get one close to the poles, because the spin
velocity increases toward infinity (that's why they're called "poles",
because if you plot spin velocity vs. latitude, the plot has a 
pole at +90 and -90 degrees).  Usually the drives break apart 
before you get to the pole; if you ever got one all the way there,
it would implode on itself and create a black hole.

I believe this is becuase of the Coriolis effect.

--
Tom Harrington ------- t...@rmii.com ------- http://rainbow.rmii.com/~tph
   "Welcome to the real world - an interesting place to visit, but I
                 refuse to live there." -Andy Rozmiarek
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