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:
“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)
“Among the virtues and vices that make up the British character, we have one vice, at least, that Americans ought to view with sympathy. For they appear to be the only people who share it with us. I mean our worship of the antique. I do not refer to beauty or even historical association. I refer to age, to a quantity of years.”
—William Golding (b. 1911)