Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

Great Plum wrote:I got an A for my GCSE Latin...

Some say it has no practical use (not true, you can sound like a complete 'know it all') and you are taught many things at school that are not relevant to the outside world... what is a practical use for the quadratic equation??

Are they used when building bridges? Um, no, hang about, I think that's double differentiation.

I'm experiencing a strange time at work. After years of only dealing with scientists, I now have a Supervisor who is an engineer (even though he says he isn't an engineer, he is a Cell Biologist, having trained as a Bioprocess Engineer and spent three, gosh THREE? whole years growing mammalian cells and finding that science is so much more fun than boring old engineering) and it is completely doing my head in. He thinks completely differently, he worries about things that to me are unimportant, he uses fancy (w@nky) terms to describe practices that I have used for years (YEARS) and just accepted them as normal and not referred to them as anything specific, and wonders why I'm not impressed by his brilliance. Doh. However: I don't think that he was taught Latin at Bangalore Boys High (or wherever he went to school). Gotcha

Anyway, one result of him doing my head in is that I have started to blurt out familiar (to me) phrases at possibly inappropriate times. The latest was when offered some chocolate yesterday. 'Oh, no thanks, I've just had a Tim Tam'. 'But it's hazelnut ..................'

NUTS, who -oh-oh-le ha-ah-er-zel- nuts.
Cadbury's take them and they cover them in chocolate.

It appears that this advertisement has not been heard in UK for many years (the Gen X or Y Poms I work with agreed with the Aussies that I had completely lost the plot).

There is a current TV ad for 'advertising' that uses old jingles (such as that one) to make the point that "ADVERTISING WORKS"

icomefromalanddownunder wrote:I'm experiencing a strange time at work. After years of only dealing with scientists, I now have a Supervisor who is an engineer (even though he says he isn't an engineer, .......He thinks completely differently, he worries about things that to me are unimportant,

It won't help and is probably quite irrelevant but when I was a Student Apprentice Engineer in the late 60's, I was told story about the difference between Engineers, Scientists and Mathematicians.

Given the task of measuring the height of a building, the Mathematician measured a distance out from the base, and then carefully measured the angle to the top and gave his result.
The Scientist climbed the building and dropped a cannonball from the top, took note of the time for it to reach the ground, and gave his verdict.
The engineer took a heavy nut (as in screw and nut), tied it to a string, climbed to the top of the building and let out the string until the nut hit the ground. He then measured the string and gave his result.

All different approaches to the same problem, and all satisfactory solutions depending on what you are going to do with the answer.