Historical Uses
Though the story may be apocryphal, Galileo is popularly thought to have used the Leaning Tower of Pisa as a drop tower to demonstrate that falling bodies accelerate at the same constant rate regardless of their mass.
Drop towers called shot towers were once useful for making lead shot. A short period of weightlessness allows molten lead to solidify into a quasi-perfect sphere by the time it reaches the floor of the tower.
Drop tubes are used for handloading black powder; the drop allows the powder to settle into a case, improving the compression of powder charges.
Read more about this topic: Drop Tube
Famous quotes containing the word historical:
“Historical! Must it be historical to catch your attention? Even though historicity, like notoriety, denotes nothing more than that something has occurred.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“Religion means goal and way, politics implies end and means. The political end is recognizable by the fact that it may be attained—in success—and its attainment is historically recorded. The religious goal remains, even in man’s highest experiences, that which simply provides direction on the mortal way; it never enters into historical consummation.”
—Martin Buber (1878–1965)