Word: forking
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...tonal distances between the black & white keys. In getting each note of the piano just enough out of tune, the piano tuner cannot trust to any such simple measuring device as his own sense of pitch. Once he has tuned up middle C with the aid of a tuning fork, he hammers away at fourths and fifths. He listens not to pitch but to the frequency of minute oscillations known as "beats," produced by the conflict of vibrations when two notes are struck simultaneously. The struggle to bring these "beats" to the proper frequency is what breaks tuners' nerves...
...which killed 2,300 of Johnstown's 30,000 people and all but washed the town from the map. Johnstown lies in a narrow valley at the junction of Stony Creek and the Little Conemaugh. At 3 p.m. on May 31, 1889, flood waters broke through the South Fork Dam, towering twelve miles away and 300 ft. above Johnstown. A 40-ft. wall of water crashed against the town with Niagara force, carrying with it the wreckage of six villages uprooted...
...payment, Russia will fork out cash and some finished products, and make up the balance by shipping vast stores of raw materials that the U.S. badly needs. Thus the U.S., which will scrape the bottom of its manganese and tungsten deposits in three years, will be able to stockpile these from Russia, along with high-grade molybdenum, chrome, mercury, zinc...
...Greek piezein: to press; literally, pressure electricity). Conversely, quartz crystals can translate electrical energy into mechanical movement. When an alternating current is fed through a slice of quartz it vibrates at a definite and unchanging frequency. The thinner the slice, the higher the frequency. It is like a tuning fork which sounds the same note no matter how hard or lightly it is struck, or like the escapement of a watch through which the changing power of the mainspring flows in measured ticks...
...with the simply eventful man such as Columbus. "Most historians would be ready to admit that, even if his ships had foundered, the new world would have been discovered . . . the whole period was one of enterprise and discovery. . . ." The hero, the event-making man, does not simply find "a fork in the historical road" -he helps create the fork. He is unique, irreplaceable. Event-making men: Caesar, Cromwell, Napoleon...