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A couple of announcements. The contest ends today 5:00. Get the email to my address. Wednesday will be the test, Test 1, and I will say a few words about that, coverage through the end of lecture on Wednesday. What I am talking about today, I will not be testing you, but maybe you might pay attention because about a month from now we will ask you a few skill testing questions about it. But it's one of those pedagogical things. If I test right up until the last thing I say, I don't think that gives you enough dwell time. The flip side is there are going to be a couple of lectures now where it is not going to be on the test, so I think you will deal with it. Monday I will be giving a seminar on engineering education in Halifax, so in my place will be Professor Ballinger who will competently substitute for me and keep the ball rolling. But I will be back Tuesday. And you can contact me if you have some questions in connection with the material. First thing, I will be...

Let's get started. A couple of announcements. A remember about the Periodic Table test which will be added next week on the 23rd. You can see the website if you want to download a copy of this to practice on it. You are required only to put the one or two-letter chemical abbreviation, the symbol. Some people ask me if I want you to know the molecular weights and so on, and I thought that was bit excessive. So I think if you just know the symbols for the ones that are up there, that would be just dandy. Here is the lady's scarf, very hot, black. See, trim lines, blue and gold, and it has elements on it. Very hot. And there is a necktie, comparable fabric, comparable pattern. It is not geeky. This is very hot. You need this. Let's get on with the lesson. Last day we looked at Rutherford, Geiger, Marsden and the experiment that they conducted on the gold foil. And out of that came the recognition that Thompson's plum pudding model is not sustainable in the li...

There were a couple of areas that have been discussed a little bit, which I wanted to elaborate on because I think it is significant. One of them relates to intact aborts. The question of a crew escape system and whether that should be automated, whether the crew should have control and what is required if you actually have the crew take control. I think Chris Kraft gave an interesting perspective with the idea that because of the difficulties, or given the requirements, really, the impossibility of incorporating a capsule escape system for the Shuttle, the project basically took the point of view that the Shuttle itself was the escape pod, which means that you have to recover the Shuttle intact regardless of any engine failures. Now that, of course, requires 100% reliability of the solid rocket boosters which we never did achieve with Challenger. Although, of course, had we operated it within its spec limits it might be another story. But, in any case, I want to go throu...