Is Martin's Transition from Carpentry to Engineering a Leap Too Far?

[MartinJH]

Welcome to PF Martin! Hey, what do you British carpenters call a two-by-four since y'all up 'n gone metric on us?

2x4 same as you guys. It's a lot easier calling it that than 50x101.[URL]http://www.engravingforum.com/images/smilies/cheers2.gif[/URL]

Martin,Welcome, another member (myself) whose origins came from Wales as well, been a hopeless fan of Waters, Gilmore and company since the mid 1980's and only wish I had a grandfather who shared his love for Nuclear Physics with me, (my Dad was a machinist, a good one) who never pushed or inspired me with his knowledge.

I encourage you to explore the forums on serious physics subjects here, "Beyond the Standard Model", "High Energy Nuclear Particle Physics", "Cosmology" for a year or two like I did. Once you do and begin to comprehend that some physicists have spent 20 - 50 years of their lives wrestling with deep physics problems I hope you feel the same sense of awe and humbleness that I did after discovering this forum in 2009. I have read about physics mostly from books since the 70's, but, with the advances in the internet, the ability to access new physics discoveries and research has exploded (to the benefit of all mankind). This forum is an excellent (moderated) place to do that. I hope you will like it here, even if you have to suffer the gross indignities of being fish slapped to become an official member.

Rhody...

Ahh another welshy, I think were starting to take over the forum.
My granddad always wanted us to do well, I became a chippy, which he loved and now aiming a little higher for myself and him [everyone needs inspiration, right?]
He shared many things with us, some we really couldn't stand lol, like his passion for steam engines (he currently has a few DMU's waiting to be sold by us) that he loved restoring. Without going into it to much he achieved many things like becoming a flt ltn in the RAF to becoming the first person to reverse engineer radiotherapy machines back many, many years ago. Setting up his own group [MERG](please google). As you can see I admired this man a lot but I need to stop there, I ramble.

I have read a lot in those forums you've mentioned, as I said before the lack of intelligence towards maths means I need to stay on the mapped road unfortunately. I am incredibly interested by those topics, dl countless hours of videos from iTunesU. But I need to be realistic and keep those as just, an interest.

I think that's a good thing about using the internet instead of relying on books, especially reading some of these threads - they get straight to a point whereas is a book you'd have to read the entire thing. There are also some bad things obviously. I love reading and get the p!ss taken out of me for taking physics books to read into work (as well as spending hours on this forum on my phone) but I can't help having a real interest in physics and the such.

As the for the forum, one of the best I've seen yet. I use a few forums and they often go off topic, bun fights start and aren't moderated well like this one, which is why I like it. Seems a lot friendlier also, three thumbs up.