I am Sean Fields

I’m aware that I haven’t written anything in over 6 months. Umm…. I’ve been busy.

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I’ve been a bit negligent with my writing duties of late.  It’s been an odd month.  This past week has shown me that there actually ARE people out in the world that are reading my silly little musings, so I now feel a new responsibility to keep new content coming.

This article is intended to be the first in a series of random things that simply make no sense to me.  With any luck, there’ll be more of these to come.

Let’s talk about English.  By “English”, I mean the language.

First of all, having spent some time in England several years ago, I should first point out that what we Americans speak is very different that the language spoken in the UK.  So, for the purposes of this article, “English” equals “American”.

I’ve heard or read somewhere before that English is one of the most difficult languages to learn.  I can absolutely understand this.  First of all, you have all of the slang and regional colloquialisms.  But even setting those aside, there are grammatical rules enforced in our language that are completely inconsistent and downright confusing.

Let’s start with a simple example:  Take the word “do”.  “Do” means to take action.  Using “do” as the root, we can apply prefixes to alter the meaning according to a predictable pattern.  Adding the prefix “un” results in “undo” which means to take away an action performed.  Adding “re” results in “redo” which means to take the action again.  Pretty simple right?

So what’s the deal with the word “repeat”?  The definition is essentially the same as “redo”.  But according to the establised pattern, it’s a root word appended with the prefix “re”.  So if that’s the case, then why isn’t the word “peat” exercised in our language.  Actually it is, but in a different context (it’s a kind of moss).  The point is, if one must first “do” something before one can “redo” it, shouldn’t one also have to “peat” something before one can “repeat” it?

But wait, there’s more….

Let’s take the word “solve” as our root:

Context 1:
solve - accomplish a goal / arrive at a conclusion / fix a problem / etc.
solution - the goal / conclusion / fix

Context 2:
solvent - in chemistry, a liquid substance into which a solid substance can be combined
solute - in chemistry, the solid substance to be introduced to the solvent
dissolve - the act of mixing the solute into the solvent
solution -  the mixture of the solute in the solvent

Now, particular focus should be placed on the prefix “dis” in the word “dissolve”.  “Dis”, for the most part, seems to mean remove, reverse, etc.  When applied to a root, it establishes an antonym of that root.  As in the word “disassociate” becoming the opposite of “associate”.

Here’s where it gets tricky.  In the first context, to arrive at a “solution”, one would “solve” the problem. However, in the second context, to create a “solution”, one would “dissolve” a solute into a solvent.

So, “solve” results in solution, and it’s “dis” prefixed antonym “dissolve” also results in a solution.

See what I mean?  No sense.  I can go on and on about this.

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This may come across as a little off-topic, given what I usually write about, but I never said this here little blog was intended to be exclusive to career specific ramblings about web technology hoodoo.  It’s my blog.  I’ll write about whatever the heck I darn well please.

So I woke up the other day thinking about steam engines, for some reason.  I caught the tail end of the horrible “Wild Wild West” movie some time over the weekend, so that’s the likely culprit.  Whatever the cause, I had steam engines on the brain.

When things like that happen, I tend to look at it as my subconcious mind giving me a challenge.  It’s happened before, like when I made the crossbow a few years ago (something I’ll write an article about someday).  I have no doubt that I could do some googling and find detailed schematics on how to build a function steam engine from common household items, but the challenge I embrace is, can I figure out how to build a steam engine based purely on the knowledge I already have in my noodle?  In other words, can I solve the engineering puzzle all on my own, without researching what’s been done before?

True to form, I took my waking thought and came up with the following schematic:

Steam Piston

Now this is pretty crude, given I that spent a whopping 30 minutes or so, but the general idea is to construct a steam actuated piston, which could then be attached to a fly wheel, or some other assembly.  The boiler is some kind of sealed container with water in it and a heat source applied that would, well, boil the water and therefore generate the steam pressure.

The boiler has a single outlet pipe for the pressurized steam which attaches to a slide valve assembly.  This valve runs parallel to the actuation of the piston itself, and has 2 ports.  One for intake of the steam, and one for exhaust.

The piston itself also has two ports for intake and exhaust, and is retained in its “resting” position by a simple spring assembly.

So, when the piston is at rest, the port for intake is opened, allowing steam pressure to build in the piston.  Once enough pressure is built to overcome the tension of the spring, the piston is actuated forward, closing the intake port in the slide valve.  Once it reaches it’s maximum open position. the steam is vented out of the exhaust port via the slide valve, and the spring returns the piston to its resting position to allow pressure to re-build and start the process over.

Sounds simple enough in theory.  The next step is to actually build it.

A few years ago, I think it was Christmas of 2006, I got a plastic model of the Millenium Falcon, which sent me on a scale modelling kick for a period of time.  In my pursuit of building super detailed models, I got this product at Hobby Lobby, which is essentially a bag of various sizes of small copper, brass, and aluminum tubes.  It’s intended to be used for making little guns, or pipes, or whatever you might need in a scale model.  So, armed with all these cool little parts, a mini butane torch, and some solder, I started working out the plumbing.  So far, I have the piston itself constructed:

The Piston

To give an idea of scale, the piston housing is 1/2 inch copper tubing, and the rod is 1/4″.

I’ll post more later when I actually get it working.

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