Talk:Archimedes' screw

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The drawing on this page is not correct. It suggests that the screw is completely filled with water. The water is, however, transported in individual packages. Ellywa 04:10, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Archimedes's vs. Archimedes'

I completely disagree about the supposed "elegance" of the "Archimedes' " spelling. It looks wrong and silly because it implies something conceptually inelegant (and wrong), i.e. many Archimedeses. Tyranny Sue (talk) 06:05, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

The ill-considered practice of using a plural possessive for "historical" names (and who now decides what names are "historical" anyway?) is too confusing and has given rise to this very annoying situation in which most contemporary English-users have no idea of the difference between singular and plural possessives. "Archimedes's" is better simply because it makes sense. It is much more important for orthography to convey sense than for it to avoid occasionally not looking right to some people. (And although I am generally a fan of Strunk & White, on this one they weren't dealing with the situation that we have now, where most English-users are totally confused about - and/or probably uninterested in - this issue.)

Answer to the -citation needed- in Literature. I was salesman at the two largest screwpump manufacturer in the world for together 12 years. They (and our competitors) calculate with the Mysken method.

Ellywa: which drawing should be wrong? The drawing with the main dimensions is correct, the picture with the old wooden screw shows your -packages-. Al —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.187.180.14 (talk) 18:13, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] citation needed

I was a sales engineer specialised at screws for 12 years and I can confirm, that J. Muysken's writings are still in use. I also read both books of Radlik and Nagel and will confirm that both books discuss the topic very theoretically.

[edit] Vandalism

Someone Vandalized this (talk) page; I tried correct it, as there were other mistakes in formatting that caused the text to appear wrong. The sigs were messed up, and the section heading. Hopefully I didn't screw it up too horribly. Delduþling♦talk 01:50, 9 May 2008 (UTC)