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:
“Whether considered as a doctrine, or as an historical fact, or as a movemement, socialism, if it really remains socialism, cannot be brought into harmony with the dogmas of the Catholic church.... Religious socialism, Christian socialism, are expressions implying a contradiction in terms.”
—Pius XI [Achille Ratti] (1857–1939)
“The past itself, as historical change continues to accelerate, has become the most surreal of subjects—making it possible ... to see a new beauty in what is vanishing.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)