XPost: sci.electronics.design   
   From: bill.sloman@ieee.org   
      
   On 21/02/2026 6:37 am, Ross Finlayson wrote:   
   > On 02/20/2026 08:43 AM, Bill Sloman wrote:   
   >> On 20/02/2026 9:35 pm, J. J. Lodder wrote:   
   >>> Bill Sloman  wrote:   
   >>>   
   >>>> On 20/02/2026 7:41 am, J. J. Lodder wrote:   
   >>>>> wBill Sloman  wrote:   
   >>>>>   
   >>>>>> On 20/02/2026 12:13 am, J. J. Lodder wrote:   
   >>>>>>> Bill Sloman  wrote:   
   >>>>>>>   
   >>>>>>>> On 19/02/2026 9:56 pm, J. J. Lodder wrote:   
   >>>>>>>>> Bill Sloman  wrote:   
   >>>>>>>>>   
   >>>>>>>>>> On 19/02/2026 7:49 am, Ross Finlayson wrote:   
   >>>>>>>>>>> On 02/18/2026 12:43 PM, Python wrote:   
   >>>>>>>>>>>> Le 18/02/2026 à 20:13, Ross Finlayson a écrit :   
      
      
      
   > It used to be said that a third of chemists   
   > were mostly involved in vinyl. Or, you know, polymers.   
      
   Polyvinyl chloride is one industrial polymer. There are others.   
   As a chemist I depended on fluorocarbon polymers - notably teflon/PTFE.   
   As an electronic engineer I met them again in plastic film capacitors.   
   Polypropylene film makes pretty good capacitors. A colleague made good   
   used of Teflon film capacitors in a weird application where their   
   superior performance justified the high cost.   
      
   > Classical effects in mechanics after the "gyrational"   
   > show up in the third order, including things like   
   > "visco-elastic creep", "Magnus heft", and "spinning a top".   
      
   Which are the sort of things that you only worry about if you have to.   
   >   
   > Sedov always nominally includes continuum and gyrational   
   > or gyratory effects in "mascroscopic theory of matter".   
      
   Never heard of him (or her).   
      
   > In something like Einstein's there's for example   
   > the "cosmological constant", while though it's   
   > "vanishing yet non-zero". For Levi-Civita it's   
   > about "the indefiniteness of ds^2", i.e. again   
   > about infintesimal analysis and quite thoroughly   
   > for the non-standard the, "un-linear".   
      
   Most people say non-linear. Quite a few real world effects are   
   non-linear. Transistor base-emitter junctions come to mind.   
      
   Bob Widlar was good at seeing its - very predictable - non-linearity as   
   feature rather than a bug. Barry Gilbert got on that act pretty early too.   
      
   --   
   Bill Sloman, Sydney   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)