This is a disgrace.
Guitars

This kind of thing makes me want to puke.
Classic guitars, made to be played, stored so some twunt can just look at them. HE CAN'T PLAY A NOTE! Sorry for shouting but it really is an abomination.
(porkylips looks better as the sun goes down., Thu 16 Apr 2009, 13:33, 12 replies, latest was 16 years ago)

In fairness
(and although I'd usually agree with you)

those guitars do look like they belong more in a museum/collection than in someone's hands on stage, they're pretty important in the development of the British electric guitar.
(username1, Thu 16 Apr 2009, 13:36, Reply)

I looked at those, and my first thought was
WANT

But then if they are that special...I don't know...would I consider myself worthy enough to play one? (I first had this thought when John Entwistle auctioned one of his basses for about £50k. I thought I'd love to get my hands on that...but I'd be terrified of damaging it.)
(LongJohnBaldry, Thu 16 Apr 2009, 13:39, Reply)

his analogy between him and someone who likes paintings but can't paint is ridiculous
to get the most from those instruments they should be played.

Electric guitars aren't delicate things.

what a raging cock-end
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Thu 16 Apr 2009, 13:40, Reply)

^^Exactly!
They are hardly porcelain. Surely being played by modern masters would enhance their value? Musically anyway.
(porkylips looks better as the sun goes down., Thu 16 Apr 2009, 13:42, Reply)

At least they're electrics.
When I see acoustic musical instruments locked away in vaults or behind glass I shudder. If you leave them unplayed in a quiet environment for a long time they lose their sound as the varnish re-settles. A guitar stored for years will sound dead until it's played for about a week. The only way around this is to store them near stereo speakers so the vibrations keep them alive.

I saw Libby Cotton's Martin guitar at the Smithsonian, locked behind glass, and almost wept.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Thu 16 Apr 2009, 13:56, Reply)

Travesty
Reminds me of Andrew Lloyd Webber's wine collection that he sold as a job lot for shitloads of cash a while back.

Buying drinks with no intention of fucking drinking them? Then again the majority of the really old ones were probably undrinkable - that's even more stupid. Why would a bottle of wine that would potentially taste like shit be worth anything at all?

I bought my father a 60-year-old bottle of wine for his 60th and drank it with him. Fortunately for us it was exquisite.

The end.
( Monty Boyce, My cheese game is strong, Thu 16 Apr 2009, 14:13, Reply)

@ Porkylips - Pedant alert
Porcelain is one of the toughest materials around - that's why you can pour boiling water into a porcelain teacup thin enough to see light through. A guitar made of solid porcelain three inches thick and fired to over 1200 degrees celcius - with a nice blue and white glaze - now THAT I would like to see.
(Che Grimsdale Best before:, Thu 16 Apr 2009, 15:52, Reply)

Pedant alert v2.0
No, porcelain is very hard and homogeneous. You can pour boiling water into the thin cup because its coefficient of thermal expansion is consistent throughout. Glass is not- hence the shattering.

However, porcelain has very low tensile strength- it does well in compression, but in tension it snaps pretty quickly, like concrete. That's why it's so brittle.

Toughness is defined as having both a high elastic modulus and a high tensile strength- think of fiberglass reinforced nylon, for instance, which you can find as a fan blade on most cars or used as a fuel tank. You can take a bubble of that stuff that's 1/4" thick, twat it with an aluminum baseball bat and it will just go bouncing merrily away. (Yes, I've done exactly that.)

So: a porcelain guitar would be heavy and look cool, but bad things would happen if you dropped it on concrete.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Thu 16 Apr 2009, 16:19, Reply)

And this is why I love TRL!

(Bazongaloid, Thu 16 Apr 2009, 16:37, Reply)

Glad you like. *grin*
Here's an article that maybe explains it a little better than I did: www.ndt-ed.org/EducationResources/CommunityCollege/Materials/Mechanical/Toughness.htm

Tests designed to measure toughness are explained here: www.engineersedge.com/material_science/toughness.htm

Porcelain is actually pretty cool stuff- depending on what you add to it, you can modify a lot of its physical properties. And, of course, it can handle ridiculously high temperatures.

Glass is fascinating to me in a different way- it's not a homogeneous material, because it's essentially a supercooled liquid that has no crystalline structure. Actual crystal is glass that was cooled slowly so it could form a crystalline lattice, and is much better at dealing with heat than glass is. The problem with glass is that small pockets within it will expand faster than other parts, resulting in fractures. If there's a lot of internal stress on the glass (which there will be if it's heated a lot) you get catastrophic failure. Wanna see something really dramatic? Put a Pyrex pan on top of the burner of a stove, empty, and turn on the burner. It won't just crack it will explode. (My sister discovered this one night as my family was eating dinner, when she turned on the wrong burner. I thought Mom shat herself.)

Ice is another fascinating one. Know why you don't want to freeze water in a glass container? Because the ice expands as it forms. Why? Because all of those little molecules, which are shaped like boomerangs, go from being jumbled together to trying to form hexagons- which takes up more space. Since glass is brittle and fails quickly under tension, your glass jar will explode in your freezer every time.

Thus endeth the materials lecture for the morning. I need to go get lunch.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Thu 16 Apr 2009, 17:03, Reply)

OMG!
All this nerdiness.

*swoons*
( girlinthehole, Thu 16 Apr 2009, 19:32, Reply)

Could be worse.
See, there's this thing called the coefficient of friction- that is, a measure of how hard it is to slide one material over another. You need to know this to be able to tell how hard you need to push something to start it moving.

My old physics textbook had a problem in it, in which they asked us to determine how much heat was generated by the friction in getting your face slapped. They gave a coefficient of friction for skin against skin in that problem.

I took that number, made a few size and pressure assumptions, and calculated how much heat was generated during a typical wank, assuming no lube.

It was days before anyone would look me in the eye.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Thu 16 Apr 2009, 19:44, Reply)