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Afternoon, all. Over on sigforum.com there's a thread running right now about how to measure the height of a tall tree using all kinds of math stuff. I sucked at math - don't mind admitting it - languages were always my thing, so I thought i'd share this little story with you about how I got around a sticky problem.

I went to school in London, and our principle math master was a very inventive kind of guy. He served in the RCAF during WW2 and earned a DFM as a Flight Sergeant pilot of a Stirling, got commissioned, and earned TWO DFCs, retiring at the end of hostilities as a Squadron Leader with 82 missions behind him.

He was a hard taskmaster, but fair, and this particular day he gave us our task for the session. Just along Millbank on the River Thames, upstream from Lambeth Bridge, was a large-scale contruction project - the Millbank Tower AKA Vickers Building. He gave each of us a piece of string about fifteen feet long, a three-foot rule, and a stopwatch. Our task was to use the items to calculate the height of the new structure to the nearest five feet. We had to use our spare time, and produce the answer on by Friday morning prep.

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Later on that same afternoon, we all did a recce, and as we got to the location, and like all seventeen y/o's, we began to argue before engaging brain. Some wanted to use the shadow factor/known height method, except that had one element that we didn't know - namely, the height. Hmmm. One bright spark said Let's measure the shadow of some of the other buildings around, or, better yet, compare it at a distance with a London bus [14ft 6in] as it passes in front of the building on the embankment. We can do THAT from Lambeth Bridge, right? [That's the bridge you can see to the right of the image.]

Good plan, Batman!!

I had other ideas.

Fast forward to Friday - last lessons in the afternoon - Math.

Well, said Dickie [he was also our house master, so we could call him Dickie for the last lesson of the day, besides, we were all big boys.] - we have some VERY interesting figures here. Some are pretty much near the figure, some are waaaaay out, but one is exact. Amazingly, tac has achieved the almost impossible, and given me an answer that exactly tallies with the planned height of this building. Perhaps you;ll share your method with the rest of us?

Well, Sir, you know full well how I struggle with math - especially trigonometry of the kind that might have gotten me some kind of an answer here. So I figured that although I wasn't much good at math, I AM very good at talking to people. So I walked onto the site and asked to see the principal architect. Having gotten in to his office I explained the task that I'd been given - he agreed that given the location it was never going to be easy using the tools we had to hand.

So I explained that I had been given a MUCH better tool to use, namely my brain and the mind inside it.

I gave him the stopwatch for a five-minute look at the building plans.
 
I read a blurb in Reader's Digest, Humor in Uniform, and posed the question to my dad, as he had been a captain in the infantry.

The setup:

You are a lieutenant with a sergeant and two privates in the detail. You have a 20' flagpole to put up. You have two pieces of rope, each 6' long, and one entrenching tool. How do you do it?

Without hesitation my dad said, "Sergeant, get that flagpole up."



P
 

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