A Country Physicist

[rebcabin]

I'm a newcomer to the network, but not to fountain pens. I'm a physicist who acquired a Meisterstuck 149 Medium as a birthday present from my wife in 1974. Every month, "Scientific American" featured an advert about the pen, and my heart yearned for it. There was a spike in gold prices after the Arab oil embargo, and the price of the pen jumped from $44 (a fortune for us at the time) to (I think) $136 (unattainable) or maybe $188 (beyond impossible), and I despaired of ever having one. A very kind and generous jeweler on Hollywood Boulevard in California sold it to my wife at the old price the day after the price jump. He knew that I had looked at it repeatedly in his shop, and I think he enjoyed the conspiracy with her. Perhaps you can imagine my surprise, relief, and delight when she gave it to me months later. It's an emotional memory. I have used it daily since then, and it is a precious partner and heirloom.

 

Over the decades, I accumulated just a few more pens: a vintage Parker cartridge pen in knurled sterling silver (I don't know the model number), a transparent Schaeffer cartridge pen with a gold Medium nib in deep royal purple (again, I don't know the model number, but I know I bought it from Levenger in the 90's), and a Namiki vanishing point in dark blue with gold trim. They all work great, but I keep coming back to the 149. I have big hands and a slow, flowing, ballistic writing style, so the weight and girth of the 149 really suit me. I trained as an artist as a youngster, and I really care about the appearance of my handwriting. Because I write a lot of mathematics, clarity and precision are paramount values.

 

However, because I can't write sloppily, I can't write quickly. In the last few months, I discovered Gregg shorthand and, finally, a way to write quickly /and/ in a flowing style. Plus, no one reads it any more, so I get privacy as a bonus! Well, that discovery just fanned the fires and I am back in the fountain-pen world with the ferocity of a newcomer.

 

I discovered shimmering inks from de Atramentis and Jacques Herbin. I keep a bunch of Jinhao 159's with Goulet M, B, and Stub nibs filled with lurid purples and oranges with copper flecks. The Jinhaos have a similar feel to the Meisterstuck, but they're cheap enough that I don't mind clogging and cleaning and fretting and even breaking them. I have a M TWSBI vac 700R filled with DA Pearlescent Camelian that just makes me giggle every time I shake it or write with it. I have a couple of TWSBI Gos, a Medium with JH Cournaline d'Egypte and a Broad with JH Amethyste de l'Ourale. Love 'em, especially the Broad. My daily carry is a Visconti M Homo Sapiens Magma filled with Herbin Rouge Grenat. It writes like a Broad point and I like it more and more. I keep the venerable old 149 filled with DA Purple Violet and don't take it out of the house. Its nib features many gorgeous variations in line width, unlike the Magma, which has a constant line width.

 

In the future, I am going Broad point for everything.

[OCArt]

Hello and welcome to this friendly corner of the universe from a fountain pen user in San Diego. There is such a wealth of information waiting for you to discover on this site. Write On!

[northstar]

Hello and welcome to FPN.

[DrDebG]

Welcome! I love your story! I purchased my first Montblanc in 1977 after I graduated from college. I was a 144 cartridge/converter and I loved it. But, over time I lost it. Many years later, I acquired a Namiki Vanishing Point like yours. I still have and love it. Last year, my husband and daughter purchased a Montblanc 146 Unicef fountain pen in oblique broad. It is now one of my very favorite pens.

[PAKMAN]

Hello and Welcome to FPN!! Glad to have you as a member!!

[jar]

http://www.fototime.com/CBEB1BF63187D6C/orig.gif

[ThomasB]

Hello and welcome from Baton Rouge, Louisiana...Enjoy your time here

[bobje]

What a great story, Red Cabin Physicist! Welcome to FPN.

[Wahl]

[Henricum_Tropen]

Hello and welcome to FPN, from Cape Town, South Africa.

[txomsy]

Welcome to FPN. Nice story. Enjoy.

[Bisquitlips]

Welcome!

[nishikori]

Welcome to this great site.

[mitto]

Greetings and welcome to FPN.

[WalterC]

Welcome to FPN, rebcabin. So, what does a country physicist do? --WalterC, a mathematician in the country.

[rebcabin]

Welcome to FPN, rebcabin. So, what does a country physicist do? --WalterC, a mathematician in the country.

Like a country doctor, I'll try almost anything Lately, been doing optimal control, which delights me because I have

a long, deep history with Kalman filtering, going way back to spacecraft navigation at JPL, a Kalman filter with 250,000

states, and Kalman filtering is mathematically dual to optimal control. I didn't think I knew anything about optimal

control when I started, then found out I really knew a lot about it!

[WalterC]

rebcabin, Kalman filtering, optimal control, JPL, spacecraft navigation, all neat stuff. I have 2 relatives who have worked on satellite control and navigation. I do image processing for optical microscopy. Since I retired I do not have access to microscopes, so I am mainly testing algorithms on simulated data.

[rebcabin]

rebcabin, Kalman filtering, optimal control, JPL, spacecraft navigation, all neat stuff. I have 2 relatives who have worked on satellite control and navigation. I do image processing for optical microscopy. Since I retired I do not have access to microscopes, so I am mainly testing algorithms on simulated data.

 

Yes, I mostly work in simulation. I write my own simulators. In fact, I did the physics for tires

for the first version of Forza for the XBox. Tires are possibly the most complicated physical

objects in routine use. They kind of act like airplane wings, with an analogue to angle of

attack called "slip angle." That's the difference between the direction the tire is pointing and

the direction the tire is going. The only way a tire can generate turning force is for that angle

to be non-zero, just as the only way for a wing to generate lifting force is for the angle of

attack to be non-zero.

[Bibliophage]

 

Yes, I mostly work in simulation. I write my own simulators. In fact, I did the physics for tires

for the first version of Forza for the XBox. Tires are possibly the most complicated physical

objects in routine use. They kind of act like airplane wings, with an analogue to angle of

attack called "slip angle." That's the difference between the direction the tire is pointing and

the direction the tire is going. The only way a tire can generate turning force is for that angle

to be non-zero, just as the only way for a wing to generate lifting force is for the angle of

attack to be non-zero.

I'll say this - I'm impressed. That had to be an absolute buggering challenge to deal with, even ignoring tread and materials. I think that wheels in general (be it with tires, or even wood) are one of the few items that almost every bit of development was done by "What does it do when you put it on the road.", rather than through any sort of simulation. Even wings could be put into wind tunnels, but you have to put rubber on the road

[rebcabin]

I'll say this - I'm impressed. That had to be an absolute buggering challenge to deal with, even ignoring tread and materials. I think that wheels in general (be it with tires, or even wood) are one of the few items that almost every bit of development was done by "What does it do when you put it on the road.", rather than through any sort of simulation. Even wings could be put into wind tunnels, but you have to put rubber on the road

It was (and continues to be) a very interesting challenge. There is an empirical model,

standard in the industry, called Pajecka [sic]. It has 15 parameters for lateral slip,

and 11 parameters for longitudinal slip. All these parameters are measured

in the lab, and can account for everything from dragline tires to formula-1

tires (google "dragline" I wrote a bit about Pajecka here:

 

https://www.dropbox.com/preview/brian/brian/brian/physics_of_racing/Beckman_-_The_Physics_of_Racing.pdf

 

(parts 21, 22, 24, 25, and 29)

 

There are other approaches, the most interesting of which being that from Rigs of Rods

 

https://www.rigsofrods.org/

 

They can simulate tires as trusses of damped harmonic oscillators (DHOs). Lord in heaven,

everything is DHOs! Circuits! The Bohr atom! Planck foams! Probably even black holes and

neutron stars if I ever make the time to catch up on them.

 

Nowadays, I would go for machine-learning to build up kick-a$$ tire models.

I'd be shocked if the pros weren't doing that.

Edited October 1, 2019 by rebcabin