Word: tangents
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...Tangent or Great Circle? To build a track straight and level enough for missiles was a technical tour de force. Air Force experts selected a section of the Tularosa Basin, near Holloman, that is almost as flat as a frozen lake. While figuring theoretically how to lay out the 35,080-ft. track, they considered making it perfectly straight both up-and-down and sideways, but gave this up because the curvature of the earth (the earth considered as a sphere with a 4,000-mile radius) would require either a cut in the ground 35 ft. deep...
Soon the debate was dizzily racing off on another tangent. New Hampshire's Republican Styles Bridges, president pro tem of the Senate, recalled that Bohlen's supporters had said that a three-man committee of venerable career diplomats-Joseph C. Grew, Norman Armour and Hugh Gibson-had recommended Bohlen. He now had definite word that Gibson did no such thing. Within a few minutes, Illinois' Everett Dirksen had something to add: he had left the Senate floor and telephoned Mr. Gibson, who confirmed exactly what Bridges said...
...entire geometry class of the Westlake School for Girls in Los Angeles was agreed. Not one of them could make head or tail of the problem: "The common external tangent of two tangent circles of radii 8 inches and 2 inches is - ." Fortunately, the class secretary, 15-year-old Johanna Mankiewicz, had an inspiration. All the class had to do, she decided, was to write a letter to the Most Famous Physicist in the World...
...stamp on the envelope. In any case, Johanna got his letter, with a diagram* and instructions on how to do the problem. The Physicist's diagram merely suggested that a right triangle can be formed from 1) the line of centers, 2) a line parallel to the common tangent and running through the center of the smaller circle, and 3) the radius of the larger circle. The length of the tangent can then be found by applying the Pythagorean Theorem. "This," concluded the great man, "gives the solution." Then he signed his initials-A.E., for Albert Einstein...
...Probably a rather baffling diagram for Johanna. Instead of drawing the tangent circles the problem called for, the Physicist spread his circles apart, introduced a third circle with a radius equal to the difference between the radii of the original...