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Aaron Mullin Sep 2014
Today’s lesson on the pad

Showing a new guy how to stake grades

So we paced out a grid and pounded in stakes at semi-even intervals

Always picking up where someone else left off

Using their existing grid, we paced ~16 m in Northing (a metre is approximately equal to a yard)

Again, using the existing grid, we paced ~13 m in Easting

Then I asked him to pace out the hypotenuse, it was ~21 m

The grid was for the most part at right angles to each other

To show the new guy how Pythagoras came to his theorem

I scratched a triangle in the crushed aggregate

On the side of the x-plane I scratched 16 m and on the side of the y-plane I scratched 13 m

The diagonal received a 21 m

Out came the notebook

16 squared plus 13 squared = ~21 squared

Using my iPhone calculator

256 plus 169 = ~21 squared
425 = ~21 squared
square root of 425 = ~20.6155281280883 or ~21

Then I grabbed my stick to scratch out a head, body, appendages, and finally a circle encompassing my proto-Vitruvian dude

Never thought work could be this fun!
Written in the stars

Published in High River in the year after the flood

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