There are two types of people . . .
Petra once told me how you can tell Harvard students from MIT students when you’re on the T.
“Harvard students are always talking about the great party they were at last night, while MIT students are trying to use vector addition to stay upright without having to hold on to anything.”
“That wouldn’t be that hard,” I said. “The train only moves in one direction, so you just have to position yourself so that you can apply an opposite force along that dimension.”
“See what I mean?”
Oh.
6 Comments:
Mmm. My experience with commuter rail is that, despite the single primary dimension of movement, there is sufficient side-to-side sway and unpredictable jolts to make standing upright without holding on a difficult proposition. Or maybe I'm just not MIT material -- I bet they're better at it that I was.
What about people who don't go to parties and haven't got the faintest idea what a vector is?
Oh, right, they go to the University of Washington.
heh... I guess that makes me an MIT student... I combine the mental vector addition with my novice martial arts training to position myself in such a way to handle the side-to-side swaying as well as the positive and negative acceleration....
Also to prove my point:
I was running in the SFH yesterday and on my second lap they closed the West Annex, so instead of 5 laps to a mile I had to do 7 laps per mile. But I had already run 2 of the 5 laps. So I did the calculation in my head to determine precisely how many laps I would need to do on the small track to make my two miles....
peter - Good point, although I think that if you know the route well enough, you can account for some of the side movements as well. Also, keeping your center of mass low would help a lot.
tolkien boy - That's OK. We like you useless types, too.
cpm - Nice. :)
PS: Harvard students are not just talking about the party they were at last night, they are talking about how they were the coolest person at it. Or, failing that, how they are close personal friends with the coolest person at it.
(I prefer the MIT kids.)
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"Useless"?!?!
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