Homework Practice Volume Of Pyramids: Fill & Download for Free

Nicolas Cole InstagramThere’s an old saying in business that instructs, “You don’t get paid what you deserve. You get paid what you negotiate.”I believe that wholeheartedly.Over the years, I’ve learned that no matter how hard you work, working hard has little correlation to how much you earn — or more importantly, what others around you believe you’re worth.Earning potential is related to one thing and one thing only:The value of what it is you do.Let me give you a few business examples:What is the value of someone who can scrub toilets?What is the value of someone who can neatly organize an office?What is the value of someone who can get people to sign up for your service?What is the value of someone who can provide assistance in a medical emergency?In society, we place dollar amounts on everyday tasks, and then offer payment to one another based on who can achieve the desired outcome — related back, of course, to supply and demand. Lots of people can scrub toilets. Not many people can perform emergency surgery.So, what does this mean for your own earning potential? How do you know if you’re being paid too little — and more importantly, how can you increase your value to the point where you are earning more than is considered “normal” for your responsibilities?Here’s how:1. Do your research and learn what is most valuable about your role.Every industry has fairly established roles, and every role has its own list of responsibilities.If you want to earn more for yourself, do your homework and learn what it is about your role in particular that is valuable — and then look for all the different parties that are willing to pay for that role, and in what context.Let me give you an example.I studied creative writing in college. Do you know how many people told me studying creative writing would fast-track me to a minimum wage job? Not very many people make a decent living writing.So, I did my homework. I asked myself, “Who needs a good writer? What would my value potentially be to them?”Turns out, CEOs with powerful messages often struggle to tackle a blank page.I’ve built a company off my ability to write and tell personal stories. But that wouldn’t have happened, had I not done my homework.2. Give up short-term raises for long-term jackpots.For four years, I didn’t make a cent off my writing.I did everything for free.If someone well-known needed a writer, I jumped at the opportunity.If a startup needed a copywriter, I took on the challenge.I wrote every day on Quora for free. I wrote guest blogs for free.And then once I had proven myself and my abilities, once I had 50,000 followers, once I had thousands of people on my email list, once I had been republished in every major publication on the Internet, it all happened on its own.This is the biggest piece of advice I have for anyone who wants to increase their earning potential.Forget the small raises. Forget the, “Hey so I’m going to need you to pay me for the extra hour I spent on this project.”Forget it all. Instead of asking for that hour paid, ask for an introduction to someone else. Ladder up your success to the next project, and the next project. Work with bigger and bigger people, for free. Master for craft. And before you know it, you will be at the top of the pyramid.3. Don’t just tell people why they should pay you more. Show them.I am a huge advocate for personal branding. And what I mean when I say personal branding is representing yourself on the Internet in a way that speaks volumes about who you are and what you do.If you Google my name, my website is the number one search result.The second search result is my About page.In fact, the entire first three pages on Google, I own — with my website, my columns, podcast features, and my social media accounts.My social headers, I had designed. My photos, I update regularly.I write a new article somewhere, every single day.All of these things make it very, very easy for someone to look me up, sit back, and think, “Hmmm, I should work with this guy.”I get about 20 inbound leads per day via email, solely because of my personal brand.No ads. No PR. Nothing else.Which is why I balk at the people who talk and talk and talk about how great they are, meanwhile they’re practically invisible on the Internet. Everything they do is outdated. They don’t share any content that proves they walk the walk. From all the way over here, in front of my laptop, how am I supposed to know they’re someone worth working with?Stop telling. Start showing.And I don’t just mean entrepreneurs. If you are an employee of a company, you will get paid more if you have a strong personal brand.4. “You can’t rationalize with the customer.”This is something I heard a mentor of mine say over and over again, and it continues to play in my head constantly.The moment you start trying to justify what it is you do and the value you provide by focusing on all the nitty-gritty things, you’ve lost.Sure, you might win their business in the end, but it’s not the win you’re going to want.Rationalizing with people only devalues what it is you do.You have to show them the vision. You have to get them to see emotional impact.This is what people do when I tell them what I charge as a writer. They say, “That’s absurd, I could hire a copywriter for $25 an hour on Craigslist. I pay someone five cents per word.”Yes. You absolutely could.And what you would get back is a bunch of words on a page, fulfilling your rationalized expectation.What you won’t get is the conviction, the voice, the tone you want representing you and everything you do. What you won’t get is someone emailing you after saying, “I was extremely impressed with the piece you just published today.”Rationalizing with the customer would be, in this example, focusing on how much they are paying per word or per piece.I don’t rationalize. I show them the real value I am providing, which always focuses on a desired outcome.5. Ask.It’s amazing to me how many people complain about their current situation, but never ask for a different result.It’s a very, very rare thing for an employer or a client to wake up one morning, call you up (or bring you into their office), sit you down and say, “You know what, I’m going to pay you more.”It just doesn’t happen that way.Like I said at the start of this article: people don’t earn what they deserve, they earn what they negotiate.If you feel you deserve to be paid more, in whatever context you are working in, it’s your responsibility to ask.You have to bring it up with your employer. You have to bring it to the attention of your client.And most importantly, you have to be prepared for them to say, “No,” and to then explain what value you provide that warrants an increase in your earnings.This article originally appeared on Inc. Magazine.Thanks for reading! :)Want to learn how I built my Personal Brand online, attracting over 50 million readers?Click here to take the free Personal Branding email course!Want to work with Digital Press? Check us out!

There is an excellent true story about a group of boys in Coalwood, a no-hope, dying mining town in West Virginia who form a “rocket club” and named it the Big Creek Missile Agency and start building rockets, and eventually win the first prize at the State Science fair.Rocket Boys is much more than the story of six boys who wanted to build a better rocket. It’s the story of a young man looking for more from his life than what his dying community will be able to provide.“Rocket Boys, while a true story, reads like a well-written novel. It deals with a wide range of issues, including the bittersweet experience of coming of age. It also provides an intimate look at a dying town where people still allowed kids to dream and helped them make those dreams become reality.”—Rocky Mountain NewsWe decided to test two of our best mixtures inside devices we hoped resembled rockets. There was some one-inch-wide aluminum tubing under the back porch that Dad had brought home from the mine to make a stand for Mom’s bird feeders. I appropriated it with a clear conscience since it looked as if he were never going to get around to it. I hacksawed off two one-foot lengths.Quentin called the lengths our “casements.”We hammered in a short length of broom handle at one open end and then poured in our powder mixes, crimping the other end with pliers to form a constriction the Life magazine diagram called the rocket “nozzle.”The result was obviously crude, but it was for testing purposes only. We attached triangular cardboard fins with model-airplane glue. We knew the fins would probably burn off, but they would at least give our rockets something to sit on. “We need to see how the powder acts under pressure,” Quentin said. “Whatever the result, we’ll have a basis for modification.”………………………………….Instinctively, we knew that the nozzle (the opening at the rocket’s bottom), like the neck in the balloon, needed to be smaller than the casement. But how much smaller, and how the nozzle worked, and how to build one, we had no idea. All we could do was guess. “How about we weld a washer or something at the bottom of the casement to be our nozzle?” I proposed to Quentin at lunch one day.Quentin pondered that while chewing on the cookies Mom had sent him in my lunch bag. “Yes. I think that might work. But who would do the welding?”I knew of three welders in Coalwood. There was, a machinist-welder who worked alone up at the tipple shop during the hoot-owl shift. His name was Mr. Isaac Bykovski. Mr. Bykovski’s daughter, Esther, had been in my class until she was diagnosed with cerebral palsy and had to go away to a special school. My mom said Mr. and Mrs. Bykovski were always asking about me, how I was doing in school and so on.I told Mr. Bykovski I was building a rocket and needed a washer or something welded to the bottom of a tube. “And you want me to do it?” he asked.“Will you?” I held my breath.“I have some aluminum tubing I could use. But welding on a washer—that is difficult. Soldering it would be easier.”“That would be fine,” I said. As long as my washer was well attached, soldering sounded good to me, although I wasn’t exactly certain what soldering was.He looked at me sharply. “I am not supposed to do work in this shop unless your father tells me to. Does he know you are up here?”I shook my head. “No, sir.” I had kind of an instinct about Mr. Bykovski. It was best to tell the absolute truth with him, no shading. “He’s against me building rockets, but Mom thinks it’s okay. I need help, Mr. Bykovski. You’re my only hope.”He considered me for a moment, his face grim. I know I must have looked pitiful, because that’s the way I felt. “Do you know how to solder?” he said at length.“No, sir.”“Then I will teach you. Your dad should not have a problem with that. Come on. You can work while I work. How long should your tube be?”He then gave me a quick lesson in soldering. It seemed simple enough.It proved harder than it looked. I gobbed on the melted liquid, but I made a mess of it, the solder dripping down the tubing and the washer not on straight. After an hour, Mr. Bykovski came over to see how I was doing. “It is not bad for your first time,” he lied. “I will finish it up for you during my break. Come back tomorrow night and I will have it ready.”The next night I again went up my secret path and found my rocket waiting for me in a cardboard box outside the gate. The solder was a perfect circle around a perfectly aligned washer at the base, and he had also soldered a metal cap to the top of the tube and glued on a wooden bullet-shaped nose cone. It was the most beautiful rocket I’d ever seen. I used electrical tape to attach cardboard fins to the casement and then borrowed Mom’s fingernail polish to paint a name on the side. I named it Auk I, after the great auk, an extinct bird that couldn’t fly.I loaded Auk I with the black-powder/postage-stamp-glue slurry mix, inserted a pencil through the nozzle, and then left the rocket to dry under the hot-water heater. The pencil was to form a hole in the powder, increasing its surface area, according to Quentin’s idea.Sherman led us up Water Tank Mountain to the old slack dump. We were at least two hundred yards above the mine. I could just make out the top of the tipple above a stand of trees. O’Dell sat the rocket on its base and then used a rock to hold it steady. We all found hiding places behind big boulders around the clearing.O’Dell took a match from Roy Lee. “A rocket won’t fly unless somebody lights the fuse!” he declared. Sherman settled in behind a rock. O’Dell lit the fuse and ran and fell down beside me. We grinned at one another.The fuse sizzled up inside, and Auk I leapt into the air in a shower of sparks. Six feet off the slack, it made a poot sound and then fell back in a cloud of gray smoke and landed heavily, breaking off its nose cone. There it lay until the powder quit burning. Quentin got to it first, getting down on his hands and knees and peering at the rocket’s base. “The solder melted,” he announced, wrinkling his nose at the sulfurous stench. “It was flying, but the solder melted.”When it cooled, I picked up the aluminum tube. It stunk, but it had flown. It had gotten only six feet off the ground. But it had flown!………………………….Quentin read each procedure aloud from Miss Riley’s book, his bony finger running along from equation to equation.The book described the phenomenon that dictated rocket-nozzle design, and Quentin and I talked about it until we were certain we understood it. When rocket propellant burned, it first produced a river of gas that flowed into the convergent section of the nozzle. If the river continued through the throat at less than sonic speed—that is to say, less than the speed of sound—it became compacted in the divergent section, bound in turmoil, and inefficient. But if the gas river reached the speed of sound at the throat (“The key to nozzle design, Sonny!”), then the gas flow in the divergent section would go supersonic, a very good thing. The series of equations we needed to work described the parameters of thrust coefficient, nozzle-throat area, combustion-chamber cross-sectional areas, and velocity of the gases predicted for any particular propellant.The book also called for us to make decisions we’d never made before: How high and fast was our rocket to go, and how heavy was our payload going to be? We understood that the questions were related.…………………….ON Sunday night, I once more went under the fence to see Mr. Bykovski, carrying Auk I with me. He examined it. “Rockets get too hot for solder, looks like. It’s going to take a weld after all.” He pushed his helmet back on his head, a cogitative move. “It is a hard thing to weld aluminum. Steel would be better.”He went over to his racks of materials, selected a steel tube, and cut off fourteen inches of it with a hacksaw. He handed it to me and I hefted it. “Feels heavy,” I said dubiously.“Yes, but steel is strong, Sonny,” he said. “An aluminum tube, to be as strong, requires a very thick wall. With steel, the wall of the tube can be thinner. I recommend it to you. I have been thinking, also, about the washer. That is not a good metal. I think we must cut off a thin piece of steel-bar stock, drill a hole in it, and weld it to the base. This next one will fly, I think. I will have it ready by this Wednesday.”I decided to push my luck. “Mr. Bykovski, could you make me two?”He made me three. On the following Saturday, Auks II, III, and IV were ready, built exactly as he had described.Once more we went up to the clearing behind the mine. “A rocket won’t fly unless somebody lights the fuse!” O’Dell said, explaining since he’d said it when our first rocket flew, he thought maybe it was a good-luck thing to keep saying it.Flames burst from Auk II. It sat for a moment, spewing smoke and sparks and rocking on its fins. Then it jumped ten feet into the air, turned and zipped into the woods behind us, ricocheted off an oak tree, rebounded back to the slack, twisted around once, twanged into the boulder Quentin and I were hiding behind, jerked twenty feet into the air, coughed once, and dropped like a dead bird. O’Dell ran to Auk II and began a wild little dance over it.“It flew! It flew!” he sang.Our rocket had flown! We ached to see what the next one would do. This time, Roy Lee lit the fuse and tripped, cursing. He barely made it to a boulder before the rocket blasted off, twirled around once, twanged off a maple tree, bounced off the ground near us, and then thudded into the side of the mountain above us, nearly burying itself into the dirt.While the rest of us joined O’Dell in another celebratory dance, Quentin dug out Auk III. “I’m telling you we’d better not launch again until we figure out how to make these things go straight,” he said.Roy Lee gleefully set Auk IV up. “We came up here to fly these rockets, and that’s what we’re going to do.” Without further ado, he lit the fuse. Caught unawares, the rest of us had to scramble to get behind our rocks before the fuse reached the powder.With a whoosh, Auk IV climbed smoothly into the air and headed down the mountain. I raised a cheer that turned into a strangled yelp when I realized the rocket was heading for the mine.……………………………………AT THE OTHER cape, the one in Florida, business was booming. The Air Force was launching ballistic missiles every week. Most of them blew up, spectacularly, but a few wobbled downrange. On February 5, 1958, the hapless Vanguard team tried again for orbit and failed, although this time their rocket managed to at least clear the gantry before it blew up.On March 17, they gave it another shot, and this time orbited a 3.24-pound satellite nicknamed Grapefruit. Dr. von Braun launched another thirty-one-poundExplorer into orbit on March 26. It seemed the United States was on the move. Then, in May, the Soviet Union orbited Sputnik III, weighing in at a whopping 2,925 pounds.Dr. von Braun wasn’t giving up, not by a long shot. According to a newspaper report, he was building a huge monster rocket called the Saturn. In the spring of 1958, Congress and the Eisenhower Administration set up the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in an attempt to put some order into the space program. I read where Dr. von Braun said he might leave the Army and join NASA. If he did, I knew the new agency was my ultimate goal as well.……………………………………….“This is a mixture of potassium chlorate and sugar,” Miss Riley said. “What we’re going to see now is a demonstration of rapid oxidation. Quentin, tell us the difference between slow and rapid oxidation.”Of course, Quentin knew our homework cold. “When oxygen combines with an element over an extended period of time, the result is slow oxidation, rust being a good example of it,” he said confidently. “But when oxygen combines with something rapidly, energy is released in the form of light and heat.”“Thank you, Quentin. This mixture of potassium chlorate and sugar will demonstrate rapid oxidation.” Miss Riley struck a match and dropped it onto the little pyramid of powder. Instantly, a hot greenish flame erupted with a loud hiss. The BCMA looked at one another. We didn’t have to say what we were all thinking. Rocket fuel.After class, I went up to Miss Riley’s desk and pointed at the little sack of potassium chlorate. “Can I have what was left over?” I asked. I told her about the BCMA, just in case she hadn’t heard about it. “We’ve built a range—Cape Coalwood—and we’re starting to get some altitude. But we need a better fuel.”“Have you thought any more about entering the science fair? I’m still in charge of the committee.”“I don’t think we’re ready,” I said honestly. “We’re still trying to figure things out. It would help if we had a book.”“A book.” She cocked her head, thinking. “No. I can’t say I’ve ever seen a book on how to build a rocket. I’ll look around though.”“Would you? That would be great. In the meantime …” I pointed at the sack.She shook her head. “Sorry, it’s all I’ve got. Anyway, potassium chlorate is unstable under heat and pressure. It’s too dangerous for rocket fuel. What do your parents think about the BCMA?”“My mother said just don’t blow myself up.”She laughed and then seemed to ponder me as if I were some sort of puzzle. “Why do you build rockets?”She was easy to talk to, almost like a friend. “I guess I just want to be a part of it—going into space,” I told her. “Every time they launch something down at Cape Canaveral, it’s like … I just want to help out somehow. But I can’t. If I build my own rockets—” I stopped, not certain I was making sense.She helped out. “If you build your own, you’re part of it. I can see that. Do you understand?”She kept smiling at me, and I felt at that moment like I was the most important person to her in the world. “Let me give you some advice,” she said. “Don’t blow yourself up. I think I want to keep you in my class. Okay?”“Okay! I mean, yes, ma’am.”Quentin was waiting for me in the hall. “What did she say?” he asked.“She won’t let us have the potassium chlorate. She said it was too dangerous.”He clapped me on the shoulder. “That’s okay. Potassium nitrate has much the same property and exactly the same number of oxygen atoms as potassium chlorate. Mix saltpeter and sugar and we should get the same reaction we just saw.”Quentin put down his briefcase and hauled out his chemistry text. He found the equation. “Potassium nitrate. [math]KNO_3[/math]. The same as potassium chlorate except it has a potassium atom instead of a chlorine one.” He put a piece of paper against a locker and scribbled down the formula. “I think if we mix it with sugar and add heat we’ll get three parts oxygen and two parts carbon dioxide along with some other byproducts. In other words, lots of good expanding gases. It should be an excellent propellant.”Quentin looked to be right. “I’ll test it tonight,” I promised.Back home, I headed for the basement after a brief raid on Mom’s kitchen cupboard. I took a tablespoon of sugar and the same of saltpeter, stirred them in a coffee cup with a wooden spoon, opened the door to our coal-fired hot-water heater, and tossed it in. I was gratified by the eruption of hot flame, just like Miss Riley’s experiment, except mine was pink rather than green. The sound and intensity and time of the burn seemed to exceed the best of my black-powder combinations. I whipped up some more mixtures, experimenting with the percentages.Suddenly our chimney erupted with smoke and sparks like a small volcano. Both Mom and Mrs. Sharitzcame running down the basement steps just as I threw in another cup of mixture.I showed both of them what I was doing, how I mixed the propellant, how I stood back when I threw a little of it in the heater. I demonstrated, and Mrs. Shartiz whooped excitedly at the flash of pink sparks. “How pretty!”The following Saturday the BCMA gathered and went down to the Cape for a test. This launch wasn’t advertised, because we had no idea how our new propellant of saltpeter and sugar would work. Auk IX took off with a satisfying hiss, but it quickly died and fell with a plop not more than a hundred feet from the pad. We recovered it and carried it back to the blockhouse to consider it. When I tapped it, a little debris fell out. Most of the propellant had burned. Sherman sniffed at it. “It smells like candy,” he said.“Rocket candy!” O’Dell chimed, and so coined our new term for the propellant.“It seems to produce an ample exhaust, but it burns too rapidly,” Quentin said. “A loose mix in the casement may not be adequate. What we need to do is somehow pack more of it inside.”“I can try wetting it with the postage-stamp glue in the next batch,” I proposed.“Sugar’s awfully soluble,” Quentin said, biting his thin lip. “It may retain the moisture for a very long time. You may try it, Sonny, but the proof will be here on the range, of course.”“Of course,” I said back, pleased that our discussion sounded so scientific and professional.………………This was also our first launch with an electrical-ignition system. I touched a wire to a car battery (an old one O’Dell got for free from a War junkyard), andAuk XII shot off the pad and leaned down-range. Quentin ran outside the bunker and fumbled with a new invention he called a “theodolite.”Auk XII’s exhaust trail was still a fast stream when the rocket faltered and began to fall. It continued to smoke vigorously even after it struck the slack. While our audience cheered, we ran after our rocket and watched the last of its sputtering rocket candy burn up. I immediately saw the reason our rocket had lost its thrust. “The nozzle’s gone,” I told the others. “It must have blown out.”We looked closer. The weld was intact. The center of the nozzle was simply eaten away. Quentin came stepping up to us. “Three hundred and forty-eight,” he said, finishing his count by bringing both his feet together at the final step. “I’m figuring about two point seven-five feet per step. That would be”—he made a quick mental calculation—“nine hundred and fifty-seven feet.” Jake’s trig book was under his arm. He ran his finger down the functions in the back. “Let’s see, the tangent of forty degrees is about point eight-four. Call it point eight. Multiply that by nine hundred and sixty …”We waited anxiously while Quentin worked it out in his head. It didn’t take long. “Seven hundred and sixty feet!”Auk XIII jumped from the pad in a similar blurred frenzy to its predecessor. Rocket candy was definitely hot stuff. The rocket leaned over, puffed a big cloud of smoke, and sped off into the sky. When it fell back, it disappeared into a dense thicket of trees. We heard it hit branches as it fell, a big oak tree waving its golden leaves at us as if signaling, Come and get it. Rocket over here. O’Dell knocked over Quentin’s theodolite in his excitement, so we didn’t get an altitude estimate, but it was obvious it hadn’t gone as high as Auk XII. When we found the rocket, the nozzle was completely worn through. “Maybe it just can’t take the heat,” Billy said.I studied the nozzle. “You know what? It looks to me like it’s corroded,” I said.“Rapid oxidation!” Quentin said, snapping his fingers. “Sonny, my boy, how quick you are! Of course! I should have seen it myself! Just like in Miss Riley’s class. Heat combined with a steady flow of excessive oxygen—it makes sense. What we need, gentlemen, is a material capable of withstanding heat and oxidation.”……………………………..“And how are your rockets doing these days?” Mr. Bykovsky, the mine machinist, asked.I was ready. “We got one up to nearly eight hundred feet. Next time, we’ll bust a thousand, I know it!”“That is very good! And your machine-shop work? Have you been practicing?”“A little. But I think we need some more lessons.” I explained that Quentin and I believed we had a solution to the erosion in our nozzles, but it would require machine work beyond our capabilities.“I will speak to Leon Ferro,” he said. “He could turn out such work in short order.”“Would you really talk to him? I wouldn’t want to get you in any more trouble.”Mr. Bykovski shrugged my concern away. “Leon will want to trade. Will you be prepared?”“Better than I was the last time,” I said.THE next week, Quentin caught the school bus to Coalwood and we went to the big machine shop. Mr. Ferro waved us into his office. “Yeah, Ike told me you were coming,” he said, rearing back and putting his boots up on his desk. “Let’s hear what you’re after.”What we were after, I said, was some kind of steel for our nozzles that could withstand heat, pressure, and oxidation. “The steel we’ve been using burns up.”“Sounds like it also needs to be thicker,” Mr. Ferro said. He had taken a pencil and, for no apparent reason, was balancing it on his upper lip. He rocked his head, working to keep the pencil from slipping off.“Yessir,” I said, mesmerized by his trick. “We think at least an inch thick. We need a hole drilled through its center too.”“SAE 1020 bar stock ought to do you fine,” Mr. Ferro said, taking the pencil and tapping it against his temple before sticking it behind his ear. He looked up at the ceiling. “It has a high melting point and good tensile strength too. Expensive stuff though. Take some time to drill and shape. C’mon.”Quentin and I followed him through the shop, his machinists busy at their drill presses and milling machines and lathes. When we caught their eye, they stopped long enough to grin and wave at us. “Rocket boys,” they mouthed to one another over the drone of their machines. Mr. Ferro stopped at a workbench and picked up a tap and threading tool. “I’d recommend inserting machine screws around the diameter of your thing to hold it in place. What did you call it?”“A nozzle.”“We need a mechanism for sealing off the upper aperture too,” Quentin said.Mr. Ferro looked at me. “We need a top plug,” I translated.He nodded and took the pencil from behind his ear and pulled out a sheet of paper from the bench. Some of his men wandered over, peering over our shoulders. They were all grinning. “we gonna get into rocket-building, boss?”Mr. Ferro handed me the pencil. “Draw me what you need.”I drew parallel lines to represent the casement and then showed the plug at the top and the nozzle at the bottom with a hole—about a third of the diameter—drilled through it. Mr. Ferro perused my effort. “Sonny, if you want work done in this shop, you’re going to have to give me an engineering drawing. I’ll need not only this side view, but also a top view and a detail on the plug and the nozzle. Think you can do that if I give you an example to follow?”“Yessir, I can,” I said.At the machine shop, Mr. Ferro presented us the finished product of our newest design, Auk XIV. Quentin hefted it while the machinists who built it circled around. “I fear the ratio of the mass of propellant added compared to the mass of the empty rocket will be too small,” he said. “I have deduced that there is a relationship between these two masses that must be within certain parameters.”“He says it’s too heavy,” I told the machinists. I took the rocket from Quentin. It was heavy, and there wasn’t much room for the propellant after the nozzle and top plug were bolted in place. The fins and nose cone would add more to the weight. I doubted even rocket candy could get this dense little rocket off the ground.“What needs to be done is to increase the volume of the cylinder with only a small amount of additional mass,” Quentin stated.“It needs to be longer,” I translated again.A machinist—Clinton Caton was his name—raised his hand. “I’ll do it, boss,” he said.Mr. Ferro nodded agreement. “It’s all yours, Clinton.”Mr. Caton, as it turned out, was a man of vision. Without any advice from me, he lengthened the rocket to two and a half feet, a monster. To fill it took a pot and a half of rocket candy. While the candy was still soft, I pushed a glass rod into it—borrowed from Miss Riley’s lab supplies—forming a spindle hole.The following weekend, our rocket rocked in the stiff, frigid wind that swept over Cape Coalwood, enough so I was afraid it might be blown over. Sherman and Billy dragged out a six-foot steel rod O’Dell had found discarded behind the machine shop and jammed it into the slack beside the pad. We used a wrap of wire to make a loop at the top and bottom of the rocket and then slid it down the rod. Mr. Ferro’s machinists crowded around, braving the bitter wind.After we got Jake, Mr. Dubonnet, and the machinists safe in the blockhouse or hiding behind their cars, Auk XIV erupted from the pad, spinning once around the rod before hurtling into the sky. Quentin threw himself out of the blockhouse with his theodolite and started tracking. Sherman limped outside, scribbling notes on the flight. It angled slightly over in the direction of what we called Rocket Mountain and kept climbing. It was our best rocket yet. When it was just a dot against the blue sky, it stopped and came hurtling down, disappearing behind the highest ridge on Rocket Mountain. We took off, scrambling up through the woods. Billy was in the lead. He was not only a good runner, but had a great nose for burnt rocket candy. A whole hour later, tired, our knees bloody from battering them against the rocks we had to climb, we found Auk XIV. It had landed nose-first full bore against the only rock outcropping within a hundred yards. Its casement was bent and its nose cone turned to sawdust. At least the nozzle was intact. There was erosion and pitting within, but it had held up. Quentin finally gasped up beside us; even Sherman could move faster through the woods than he could. He paused, his hands on his knees, trying to get his breath. Then he thumbed through Jake’s trigonometry book. “Three thousand feet,” he concluded.Three thousand feet!“I think we’d better give those boys a call down at Cape Canaveral,” Roy Lee said. “We could teach them a thing or two.”As Michael says, there is no avoiding some fluid mechanics while designing your nozzle, which is called a De-Laval nozzle in engineering terms. It’s designed to convert slow-moving, high-pressure gases into a stream of low-pressure, high-velocity gases. If the gases reach sonic velocity at the throat, they will go supersonic in the diverging part of the nozzle, producing maximum thrust.https://www.amazon.com/Rocket-Boys-Coalwood-Homer-Hickam/dp/0849663245/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1511848225&sr=1-2&keywords=rocket+boysConverging Diverging Nozzle10. 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3,……..We have Ignition!

A bit of background:My wife and I are Punjabi Hindus, India born and moved to Canada in our early 20 s. We both worked non stop for 45 years and still working full time.We did travel in the past fair bit and now move far more than average in the past.So here we go about Cairo/Egypt.Is it safe to travel to Cairo?Here is the very brief answer: It is Not safe at all, except for a few countries, no country is extremely high on safety level, the degree of safety varies.Is it worth the risk to go, yes indeed?Now the detailed answer:We were not born yesterday, we believe, we are exceptionally trained, street smart, well-traveled seasoned traveler.On top of all that, we were born and grew up in India, a country of now 1.2 billion.So we thought we are street smart, well versed in travel, know any and every trick/fraud/ and dangerous situations with no respect for safety.Cairo, Egypt should have been a piece of cake.Surprise, Surprise, and more surprise, no it was no a piece of cake.With all the training/experience being street savvy, we had the sample everything, not a significant loss but we could have been a severe victim per sure.Stay tuned:Be it Asia or the Middle East or Europe or Africa or North America:Keep your guard on; a tourist is a walking target.Food Safety:(I have two masters degree M.Sc. Dairy Science, U of Punjab, India, M.Sc. Food Science, U of Guelph, Canada with life experience in dairy/food/flavors.)Let us talk about Cairo, please do not venture in street food in Cairo, the main primary reason, dust blowing around the city.I have seen mini dust storms, landing on the freshly baked bread/food. This dust has serious bacteria and pollution from the smoke and filth around the city.The only food I recommend from the restaurants of well-reputed hotel chains.Or in the worst case, keep Ramen Noodles handy and only fruit Banana and Oranges, so that you could peel off the fruit from rind/skin which most likely os loaded with a bacterial load. These two fruits offer a very low risk of falling sick. Keep dry nuts handy, most likely take it from home country.There the shops are open, and dust is landing on the free bags, and the of contaminated food is extremely high.Water:Never venture drinking even for brushing your teeth with tap water. ONLY BOTTLE WATER, THAT TOO A BIG BRAND NAME.( I have seen rotting carcasses of big animals in an open sewer, therefore, please do not get offended, In India, there are rotting human remains in the most sacred river.) There are ways to protect and reduce risks.Shopping for Egyptian stuffThese items: Papyrus painting, (marble, alabaster, granite), Egyptian cotton garments, souvenirs, Egyptian hand knotted carpets, expensive spices, and perfumes.Keep this principle in mind; you only get what you pay for it.Like in another country, tourists are the targets, for fake stuff, such items which are the specialty of a state are not hawked in the streets/or laid on the side streets/or flee markets.These are all fake/junk/total garbage unless these are bought at a showroom, well-established shop.Most likely it will not make it to your country back home. However, it is a good memory.To buy real authentic things of any country, is an art, connection, eye for the tests of real things, for example, purchase silk/pearl/jade in China, and buying original Papyrus painting/alabaster statue/are also art/science/knowledge/ yes indeed the real thing forever to enjoy.The trick is to have a local connection, who could guide you, in my case, I have a very reliable friend, and he took me to the sources.Be extra extra extra careful when buying this expensive stuff, which may be fake/or extremely out of the world price.We (my wife and I) have extreme knowledge of spices, we are almost sure, Saffron was fake, and the other spices were costly. Plus we would not venture to buy spices in the sitting exposed to the flying filth in the streets.Never mind extremely high prices; these spices may have a very high incidence of foodborne problems. For locals, it may not be an issue, due to different resistant flora, but for others, it is high risk.Visiting the Temples/Tombs/Pyramids/Although these places are trendy and have huge crowds, I do not believe there are crooks to snatch your purse and run.However please be prudent and hang your bag up front and not in the back.Do not take out purse loaded with the cash to buy a bottle of water.Keep small change very handy.Keep all kind of small bills; sometimes, for example, they intentional put the price say 41 Egyptian pounds and the chances are you give 45 or 50. Usually, they will pretend they do not have change. Your bus/ride is leaving in many cases people live a substantial difference.Beggars/hawkers/will drive you insane, like swarms of flies.Our suggestion: At some of these places photography is allowed, in some areas, you have to buy a ticket, and some places guard wants a little grease in his palm and enables you. The best is to buy a ticket and get it over. Otherwise, it will be hidden and seek.Never make a big mistake, in giving money to one, within seconds you will find yourself surrounded by a vast crowd.The best never make any eye contact or show any interest, once you do, you are now an easy target.Visiting the other attractions/activities.Egypt had a lot of other activities, shows and designed mainly for tourists. Of course, they want to take your money. Be extra careful, to read the description of the attraction, and ask a lot question/s before parting with your money.My wife and I thought we are self-proclaimed experts, but we did waste a fair amount of money, we did not get bang for the buck.Be extra cautious in doing Camel and Horse rides, I grew up among these two animals, and I could not be enticed into this gig. However, our other fellow friends lost a bundle on this gig. And they complained of aches and pains for the rest of the trip.Visiting incredible places:As a general rule of thumb, please stay away from such sites, such as massage parlor, night clubs, Belly dancing, and other such places. Unless you are with a local person. Please do not put yourself in a dangerous and dirty position in a foreign land.My friend advised us, do not venture two to three blocks away from our very reputed hotel. Even then as soon as stepped out, couple shop keeper started to harass and followed us through our walk. As we think we are adamant, and we told them firmly and politely not to annoy us.Rule of Thumb: There is a famous Indian saying: Once you enter a room full of black soot, there is a high chance you will get a black spot on your white garment.Bargaining:Unless it is very high-end showroom/ international franchise, be prepared to get scammed (no matter how smart/streetwise/rocket scientist or have I.Q. of Albert Einstein. No one can win, the vendors of Asia, the Middle East, no matter how much you grind, in the end, you are never sure what have you done in the win or lose in the bargain.Egypt is far ahead of China in bargaining market, every step you take you to have a deal with hawkers/street shops/and calling you non stop/some times even very aggressive and some times even very offensive and some times even sarcastic.Rule of thumb: The real price is about 15 to 20 percent of the starting price.Be ready to walk away from the deal.And don't worry, believe me, you will find a similar item as you move.Now you know the real value, and offer reasons to the next vendor and conclude the deal.However, please keep the bargain reasonable; these vendors are impoverished people.General Shopping and being careful about it:The shopping is a different experience in Asia and the Mid East; Western shoppers may get very many considerable surprises in shopping experiences. And Egypt is not far behind in such encounters.Rule of the Tumb:Buyer is aware and keeps the guard up, with one set of eyes in the back of your head.Popular frauds/scams.a. Show you something and pack something else.b. More oaths/promises the shop keeper takes and puts a hand on his/her holy book, more dishonest/crook, the vendor he/she could be.c. These crooks do not think/or feel they are crooks, to feed their family, they are willing to do almost anything.Rule of thumb:The best bet: Prepare yourself for the trip so well, that you do not need anything for general shopping.In Egypt, I ran out of my suitcase space. I bought two, small bags, one backpack, and the other check-in. I learned one of the best lessons and never to venture for such shopping. Sure I lost a lot of money, but now I know the tricks of the trade.How to deal with bizarre laws, some beat all the logic?At a particular tourist attraction, they are incredibly fussy about carrying even a tiny tripod for the camera. I am not talking about a real/mega size tripod.A tripod is a tripod here too size does not matter.You may argue until the cows come home, regardless, buy a ticket for your tripod. And move on with your life.Rule of Thumb: Try not to make a scene, they do not listen, and they do not care. Keep on arguing, “ It is Yella, Yella” “ Move on Ya Habibi.”How to stop unwanted advances and flirting?I find it is relatively safe, for girls/women in this country. However, it is not as safe as China/Japan.Also, I found the tour guide/shop keepers and hotel staff, usually think that Western ladies are an easy target. It is Western culture and their nature to smile, socialize, being polite and converse. However, in Egypt I found, a good number thought it was easy to move further.Egypt is a country where females are somewhat reserved and do not have such liberties which West already has achieved.Rule of Thumb: Your friendly gesture and behavior could be taken to another dimension, therefore please keep this in the back of your mind — just the business not more or not less.Tipping:A few years back in time, there was no tipping in China, with a significant influx of Western tourism, now tipping has become a tradition there.Similarly, in most of Asia and Mid East, now tipping is a way of life, in reality, take it in any way, but Westerns have converted hard working people into glorified “ beggars.”Regardless, in Egypt “ Bakshish” is a standard word, which means reward/tip, you do not have to give anything if you do not want too. But rest assured they will chase you endlessly until you break down.Rule of the thumb: Pay the agreed price and move on, either do not respond or say sorry I paid you enough.STAY TUNED FOR MORE.Victim of frauds.My gut feeling tells, with my experiences of living in such countries, that usually and in most of the cases. Nothing comes out of such cases, other than throwing good money for bad.Realty is the whole systems are usually very corrupt, top to bottom. And if someone for one mistake or the other, became a victim, I believe the best to lick the wounds and move on.Rule of thumb: Do your very best to avoid any shady deals and great buys. Because there is none, it is all myth. No one is going to sell you the piece of The Taj Mahal or a Treasures of King Tut. Therefore do not run after the rainbow. And become a victim in the first place. Second, once you have become the victim, lick the wounds and move on.Fake stuff/total inferior stuff/over exaggerated sites/Countries which survives on tourism, traders/peddlers/swindlers/know how to entice the tourists and sell junk to them. The techniques are the same, from Nanjing Road Shanghai to the Treasures of King Tut.For example: Want a real/genuine silk in China, or want high-class Egyptian Cotton garments, only shop where you a high volume of natives are shopping.Rule of thumb: Almost everything is available online, and it has return guarantee, try not to buy the Taj Mahal, the Great Wall of China, and King Tut’s treasures in the native places. These treasures are not for sale and if these are: No one can pay the price, and these items once you buy, now have no return policy.All tourist trap stuff.a. Perfumes/Essential Oils/b. Spending an evening with a local family.Perfumes/Essential Oils/In Cairo, there are rows and rows of shops selling these items, as said earlier, I had two Master’s degrees and worked all my life in the applied Chemistry field. When you quiz these sellers about the purity and unadulterated/undiluted assurance, in most cases they wanted to end the selling part and want you out more or less. So that they could fleece the other female wide-eyed impressed Westerns.I know, and I have worked in the related industry, these oils such as Jasmine oil goes through tonnes of tests before our company will buy. It is not a joke to sell these kinds of extremely precious things in small shops.Spending an evening with a local family,I believe you do not have to pay a minute there, all you have the stand on the roadside and see the life unfolding in front of your eyes.Internal unrest and the present situation?As per my friend: Tourism in Egypt declined tremendously after 2011, due to internal turmoil in the country. As it appears now, this situation is under control, and the president Government has good power.AndNow according to him, tourism is rising steadily.Hawkers, peddlers and constant/persistent following by some stranger to ask to visit some shop in the area.Try your best not to expose yourself to such a situation by walking in the dark and away from your hotel.Going in a group of a few people is ideal.Some times these hawkers will give you some small article and say it is a gift, once you take it, then they will ask for money. The best is never to accept this article. In case they forcefully give it to you, just gently put it on the ground.Try not to take pictures with the locals, after the image most of them ask for money.Rule of thumb: The best thing is to ignore; most of these people are not aggressive, keep walking and do not respond. As if you are dumb.How to deal with very odd situations?In my view it is prudent to take a guided tour; it is very safe and secure.OrThe second good option is to go with a group of friends/relatives.OrIn case you are an alone hunter, try your best to stay in an excellent, reputable hotel. Staff in these hotels are accommodating and helping. They guide the tourist very well, and at the reception desk, usually, one or two people are very well versed in tourism.Some other suggestions for a safer/whole tour in a country which is exceptionally incredible country.The reality is except a few places in the world; no place is safe, a tourist makes or breaks a beautiful trip by making the right and relatively safe choices.In China, one of our friends wandered off breaking away from the group in a back alley, in Shanghai, on Nanjing Road in a lure of fake Rolex watch. Rest of the afternoon was a long story.Breaking away from the group and wandering of your own in a back alley, for a deal/or other pleasure is an invitation to trouble.In the end, we cannot stop living, and we have to travel and cannot live in a bubble.Also, please keep in mind, these are ancient civilizations, maintaining museums/huge and more significant than life structures is not easy, these countries need help.Also, please keep in mind, there are certain portions of the population in extreme poverty coupled with illiteracy, huge families and no hope for the future. Unfortunately, such people are the lowest of the low and have no choice but to resort of hawking/peddling and ultimately begging.These countries do depend very heavily on tourism and visiting there is an excellent way to help and keep the ancient wisdom alive.Yes, sometimes it is incredibly irritating with constant pestering of hawkers/peddlers/, yes sometimes we get fooled by shady deals. But think as follows.A. Helping these lowest of low on the ladder is a good cause.B. Helping them may put food for a youngster tonight, feeding someone is feeding the Lord Himself/Herself.Some other scams/nuisances/and how to avoid it.Last but not least: ( Extreme bad behavior of tour guides)I found most of the tour guides have an extremely thick accent in English, hardly understandable. Therefore you do your homework as much as you can.At times I found them very cocky, rude, macho, and very biased to preferential treatment to some visitors than the others.Some I found is on a high all the time on “ Shisha,” smoking Hashish is a general practice there.I found, some with absolutely no manners, due to smoking Hooka/with Hashish.What is the answer: Keep calm, and pass the time, and forgive their nuisances, bad manners and their appalling behavior.Just ignore, they are high on Shisha.Also,Some shop keepers are extremely aggressive: Extreme lack of manners, and have no sense of talking. They are all on “Shisha” aka, Hashish smoking in Hooka.Some will hawk, and when you do not respond, may throw some profanity in their Arabic language, do not answer. You cannot change, and you cannot win, these ignorant people.Do not pick a war, move on, after a few catcalls, hawking and throwing vulgarities it will stop.Some unruly, self-proclaimed wanna be Seikhs, smoking Shisha in cheap restaurants gawking tourist women:Do not respond, do not make any conversation and try not to make any eye connect. These are just bums, and passing the time and planning their next popcorn to pop. Typical unemployed/lowly educated or barely educated youth. Typical bums which you find in every country.This is a typical obese bum, smoking shisha, with a cocky attitude, and no respect for the surrounding, sitting in a cheap street restaurant, with his mannerless position putting his feet and shoes on the other bench with cushions to sit on.He believes he has arrived and no matter what do not respond to his gawking and rude remark/or calling out.AlsoStreet food vendors and small restaurant scams:Be extra careful, even before you order food, some will put some peanuts/sunflower seeds with a shell on/and similar nuts.Also, they may put bottled water,Also, put some butter on the table.You may believe it is included in the food, surprise surprise surprise it is all extra with an unreal price. Now you try to argue, as soon as you do, two or three rough looking guys will come to the help of the waiter.Therefore, tell them to take it away or settle the price before even you touch anything extra.The second biggest scam is when your bill comes you will be stunned solid because it is almost double what have you ordered.There is a surcharge, service charge, taxes, tips, and the list go on, try to argue once again hoodlum looking two or three guys come to the aid of this waiter/server/manager.What is the answer: Don't be shy, ask a question and find out the total price, not the published price. It is just part of the scam and then the final bill may be double.Also, request them to take extra things away or make sure it is included the price and what is the price.Boat rides/camel rides/horse rides/horse buggy ride scams:Be extra careful and settle everything before riding these things, all these are operated in Mafia style.All these people swarm you like flies, and basically, they try to intimidate you to get more and more out.One last biggest nuisance on roadside restaurants:As you are having a meal, one lady, with two kids on in tow, and one baby, in the lap, she will make the gesture to eat and point towards the kids. In India it is also a very popular ploy, this time I offered her, hearty meal, I swear this is a meal I offered her. This meal just arrived, totally clean and I just took part in the pita. She declined and wanted money.