NANOSTYK

[FrankTym]

Came up with a gadget of sorts. Several years ago met Capt. (later, Rear Admiral) Hopper. Little sparrow of a lady, kinda feisty but neat. Sadly, no longer with us. She looked me up and down and said "You're not much more than 6 nanoseconds tall." Then she grinned and shook hands.
Anyway, talking to an instructor at CSU, Pomona, he explained that he was having problems in getting his students to comprehend speed of light.
Remembering Capt. Hopper, I made him a ruler that, based on the speed of light, is one nanosecond long.
He likes it. So I'm going to attempt to sell them to the high schools.
Anyone had dealings with high school procurement and technical products.
This is brand new to me, and any feedback will help.
Thanks.

[haklesup]

If I read you right, you want to market this ruler and make some $. I know a few teachers and they are all experts at begging for materials and educational discounts, there simply isn't much money in the school systems. Your only chance might be to sell it to an educational publisher or maybe the discovery store or something like that. Another option is direct website sales fueled by SPAM (oh, did I just say that)<p>But since the idea and product would be insanely easy to rip off and difficult and expensive to patent (a copyright might work ok though), you may find the road to money paved with bills. My advice would be to make a web page with instructions and give it to educators directly as a gift from you to them.<p>PS save me the 5 minutes looking up constants and doing the math and tell me: How long is your 1ns ruler?

[Dean Huster]

haklesup --<p>Light travels approximately one foot per nanosecond. I've used that illustration for years with digital students. It gives them a much clearer picture of the fact that light isn't nearly as fast as they thought -- or that logic gate propagation delays are a heckuva lot faster than they thought! Actually, saying that you're about six nanoseconds tall is relatively unclear. It makes you quite the pipsqueak if your reference is the speed of sound, i.e., time is a pretty danged poor unit of measure for length or distance given the variabilities of WHAT we're referencing the "speed" against and in what medium.<p>Dean