One of the things that CJ and I enjoy is doing crosswords with our morning coffee. We usually do the Times 2 general-knowledge crosswords. However when we were in Chester I left the book in the car. At The Patisserie Valerie where we had coffee and cakes there was a Daily Telegraph for customers use and I knew that it had a large weekend general-knowledge crossword. So we decided to do the top third. All was going reasonably well until we arrived at the following clue: SI unit of magnetic flux density. It is one thing not knowing the answer to a general-knowledge question however it is entirely another when the question itself is entirely beyond one's comprehension. In this case neither of us had the vaguest idea what magnetic flux density was never mind what an SI unit was or was likely to be called.
Having admitted defeat I decided to Google it (aren't modern smartphones wonderful?) only to find that the answer "weber" didn't fit in with the starting letter T which we knew to be correct given that the word eight derived from the clue to 18 across: ..... days a week (Beatles' Song).
Adrian, engineer, sorter of photographic problems and solver of cryptic crosswords has now enlightened me: it's a Tesla.
Oh, goodness knows how anyone does crosswords. It's an art I have never mastered!!!!!
ReplyDeleteIt has to be general knowledge ones for me Jenny, I was trying to learn cryptic but too many other things in life at the moment.
DeleteOh the fun one can have with SI units! Also you fell into the trap of not fully reading the clue and web page. The SI unit of magnetic flux density is indeed the Tesla, while a Weber is the SI unit of magnetic flux.
ReplyDeleteI did type the whole phrase into Google Mark and the article I read made no mention anywhere of a Tesla. I did realise afterwards what the problem was.
DeleteWe all learned something new today. :)
ReplyDeleteMersad
Mersad Donko Photography
I still have no idea what an SI unit of magnetic flux density actually is Mersad. I just know what it's called.
DeleteI would have been clueless.....thank goodness for Adrian...YEAH!!
ReplyDeleteYes Virginia amusing and useful.
DeleteThis made me giggle, because to me a Tesla is the Unknown Animal that Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet were chasing round a bush in the snow... (That's in the Swedish translation, though - and spelled tessla. In English the tessla is a Woozle. That could be as good a word as any to try next time you get stuck.)
ReplyDeleteI don't remember the Woozle Monica. It's like Words With Friends when one sometimes makes up words and hopes.
DeleteIf you like, you can refresh your memory (of the Woozle) here :)
DeleteA ridiculously easy clue, GB.how could you have failed?
ReplyDeleteOn that basis Frances because I am ridiculously thick. Actually failure in such matters comes naturally. I don't have to work at it at all.
DeleteSo, magnetic flux is now part of general knowledge. I detect serious gaps in my formal education and my informal reading there.
ReplyDeleteI'll echo that Meike. It wasn't in my 'Schoolboy's Pocket Book' that's for sure.
DeleteI was half guessing Graham. I only know of him as he invented the AC Induction Motor. As he also invented the early methods of AC power distribution I expect he had to invent a motor to run on it.
ReplyDeleteYou have got through life perfectly well without knowing. It is fun though.
DeleteFlux density is the number of flux lines or Webbers in a given area. It's like normal density but over area; unit squared and not volume, unit cubed. I hope you is now heducated in the rubbish that is S.I. Some units work well like Joules instead of Therms. Others not so well, like changing a nautical mile to a kilometer. That is why it has never happened. Normal folk aren't always daft folk.
Don't get too worried, the pure Physics folk are still trying to differentiate between mass and density and the mathematicians are still refining differentiation. The old definition of differentiation was the area under a curve. z- to x+. on any point. Useful but when they introduced the z axis I lost the plot. They are cunning devils are mathematicians they can swerve the model. I can't gainsay them but when you look at an x,y,z graph from the top of the y axis whose to say which is the x and which is the y. That's all sorted. They have to agree now and again if only to make computer software work. The internet is great. Politicians are too dim to get involved but the folk that matter have come up with world wide standards that work in real time.
We could easily have ended up with the French Pede. A Pede is what you get when you divide a circle into a hundred bits. I'm sure you remember that a circle has three hundred and sixty bits we posh folk call these degrees and not bits, a sixtieth of a degree is a minute and a sixtieth of a minute is a second. Easy peasy just like a clock...Almost. Clocks now are regulated to at least three different times. I ought to be a letchurer. Had we gone with the French Pede we would now have Millipedes and Centipedes or visa versa....Enough to drive a right minded human to insecticide. Have fun and please tolerate my lunacy.
Sorry, as always I need an editor my broin works fasterer than my fingers. I've muddled up my x,y and zeds. I can clarify the matter for any of your readers that I haven't sent to sleep.
DeleteYour last comment is quite funny in the circumstances. I read the penultimate statement (and the last one) just before midnight last night sitting in bed with the laptop and barely able to keep my eyes open. I do recall trying to think up some apposite retort before I slipped away momentarily and decided it was time to put the laptop away. This morning I am looking at my screen and your comment has scrambled - really. I wonder if the laptop is trying to tell me something.
Delete