← Back to Episodes

Daily 109: Millions Monday - Tent Stake Trigonometry

ai-in-the-air_day-109
Download MP3

Summary

First Monday back - rainy so announcements via PA and Discord. JC postponed (16 people needed, no indoor space for COVID). Testing auger tent stakes with Phil - got very dizzy spinning. Three-hour staff meeting. Millions Monday: 120-degree angles for three stakes, trigonometry with 30-60-90 triangles, 3.5 feet between stakes.

Transcript

0:00 Welcome to Arts and Ideas, in the air, under the sky, by the fire, and around Baltimore.
0:09 Your daily podcast briefing of all the goings ons, ins and rounds, Arts and Ideas, Sudbury
0:14 School.
0:15 So today was our first Monday back.
0:17 We had three days last week, and then today we had our first in-person Monday mandatory
0:24 announcements.
0:27 It was unfortunately rainy at the time, so it felt much more like being online for announcements.
0:34 We did get to have the announcements going on over the PA Inside, as well as on Discord
0:41 on the voice channel.
0:43 So hopefully that all went out, and a few people gathered in the actual dining room
0:48 to hear the announcements.
0:49 So that was kind of nice to have a little bit of that back, but unfortunately it was
0:54 just kind of rainy out, so we couldn't all gather as a group.
0:59 It was kind of, yeah, kind of sad.
1:04 And we also couldn't do JC, because that case involves a lot of people.
1:12 I think the minimum number of people that would be all present at once would be 16,
1:18 and we don't have any room inside with the COVID numbers in place that would allow for
1:28 that.
1:29 So we have to do it outside.
1:30 One of those things that was kind of nice that we kind of skipped the winter part of
1:33 the in-person part, because it would have been hard to do these things.
1:40 I'm sure we would have figured something out.
1:42 Maybe some people coming and going, I don't know, or having multiple rooms with some kind
1:49 of feed going on, I don't really know.
1:53 We can just use it for nice weather right now.
1:59 So that's good.
2:00 Let's see, what else?
2:03 Phil and I actually testing out some new tent stakes out in the field today, setting up
2:11 a tent pole.
2:13 It's got kind of, well, had to figure out, ooh, yeah, maybe that'll be my Millions Monday.
2:24 Get back to that.
2:26 But anyway, we put it up, and we're trying to take it down and see which stake fails
2:33 first.
2:34 It was kind of, if anyone had a chance to watch us, it would be kind of funny, because
2:39 it's one of these auger kind of style stakes that you turn.
2:45 The big one was kind of easy to, both of us just kind of like passing it off to one another
2:50 and rotating, but the more tiny one really required us to be a lot of force on top of
2:57 it, so it was just one of us spinning around, and then we would switch turns, and we got
3:00 very dizzy, and it was funny.
3:05 Um, so it's still standing, and we did a tug of war on it to try to take it down, but so
3:13 far it has been holding all three stakes, so I guess we'll see.
3:17 Yeah, so that was cool, fun, muddy, very muddy, and then, oh yeah, staff meeting, yeah, so
3:27 then I was in the meeting for three hours, only kind of one interruption for a little
3:33 bit of someone slipped off a tree, and you know, wanted us to have to take a look.
3:44 It was all fine, as it always is, but yeah, other than that, it was just lots of talking,
3:53 lots of meeting time, lots of stuff to go on, go over, we are trying to have staff meet
4:01 more regularly so that, you know, nothing slips by us, and let's see, what else, I don't
4:15 know, it was kind of a cold, wet day.
4:19 Some people were out here at times, definitely, and certainly for eating, which I'm always
4:24 grateful to see.
4:27 When I first got here, I was wiping the chairs off of all the water, and then just as I finished
4:31 wiping all the chairs, rain fell down, and the number of people out got kind of wet,
4:39 so yeah, it might be some soggy clothes tonight.
4:42 Oh well, let's see, for Millions Monday, this is kind of a mathy part of the podcast, I'll
4:51 talk about the little tent thing, so we were putting up three stakes, and we wanted them
4:58 to be kind of, you know, equal distance from each other, so it's supporting one another,
5:08 and so the angle between them is going to be 120 degrees, and well, how do you do that?
5:16 Well, one way of doing it is, put a stake somewhere, I think we determined two feet
5:22 out from the center, so we can do that, and then essentially you do a little bit of trigonometry,
5:31 that's right, good old trigonometry, triangles, and you say okay, what's the 120 degree angle
5:39 give you, and you know, basically, if you sketch out it, it's a triangle with two equal
5:50 sides, and then there's the third side, like the two equal sides are the distance of the
5:55 two poles to the center, so those are both two feet, and then the other side is the one
6:00 that I want to compute, because if I know how far it is out that way, and I know how
6:05 far it is from the pole, then I can place that second stake, and so draw in a perpendicular
6:11 and you get a 30, 60, 90 right triangle, and the side opposite the larger angle of the
6:25 two acute ones, the 60 degree one, goes to the other side, and so that side was like
6:33 root three over two, and so you multiply that by two, and so that gives you half the side
6:45 length of that base, and then you double that again, and so that's the full side length,
6:50 and that was like three and a half feet, more or less, so then you can just, it's almost
6:58 like in your mind, you can draw a circle, you have the one stake, and you draw a circle
7:03 of radius three and a half, and then you draw a circle the center of radius two, and you
7:08 look at where the two things intersect, and that's where you put your other two poles,
7:14 so and then, you know, you can check that it all works out, and of course when we did
7:20 it in actuality, it was not perfect, but it got close, you know, pretty good, I think
7:26 that really helped us, it was of course kind of a symmetry thing, so you place the one,
7:33 you know where to place the other, and you actually place the first stake in the, right
7:39 in the middle of this length of this board, so that made it easier to think it's all okay,
7:45 it's on the corners, and you line it up with some measurements, and you know, it's all
7:50 okay, so you know, math happens people, math happens, it's rare, but it happens, yeah,
8:00 so that's cool, alrighty, so that's enough of my blabbering today, sorry if I'm a little
8:07 disjointed but it was a long meeting, a good productive meeting, but a long meeting, tomorrow
8:14 school meeting, always very exciting, and maybe we'll get to do the JC case, not sure,
8:20 it's kind of cold, supposedly tomorrow, so we'll see, definitely Wednesday, Wednesday's
8:24 looking great people, 60 degree weather, so we'll see, but you know, if it's sunny, and
8:32 not windy, that site can be nice, right now it is sunny, but it is windy, so I'm kind
8:38 of cold, so hopefully this has been recording, because I can't do this again, have a good
8:44 day everybody, and I'll see you when I see you.