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[KNat <knat AT sprintmail.com>]

VAN DELL JORDAN wrote:
> I do remember reading about a tribe somewhere who
> cooked eggs by rolling them back and forth in a sort
> of sling, letting friction provide the heat.   May or
> may not be true but makes an interesting image.
> Van Dell
>   
Galileo felt otherwise

*  From a letter to the Dowager Grand Duchess Cristina, June, 1615*

I cannot refrain from marveling that Sarsi [a pseudonym for the Jesuit 
Grassi] will persist in proving to me, by authorities, that which at any 
moment I can bring to the test of experiment. . . If Sarsi insists that 
I must believe, on Suidas's credit, that the Babylonians cooked eggs by 
swiftly whirling them in a sling, I will believe it; but I must say, 
that the cause of such an effect is very remote from that to which it is 
attributed, and to find the true cause I shall reason thus. If an effect 
does not follow with us which followed with others at another time, it 
is because, in our experiment, something is wanting which was the cause 
of the former success; and if only one thing is wanting to us, that one 
thing is the true cause. Now we have eggs, and slings, and strong men to 
whirl them, and yet they will not become cooked; no, if they were hot at 
first they more quickly become cold. And since nothing is wanting to us 
but to be Babylonians, it follows that being Babylonians is the true 
cause why the eggs became cooked, and not the friction of the air, which 
is what I wish to prove.