fiefoe

This is high school physics all over again, but with better anecdotes and a bit more primary sources.

Random wandering: a drunk's probable distance from his pub depends on the square root of the time.
A wheelbarrow is a second-order lever, since the load and the lifting force are on the same side of the fulcrum.
"The closer the couple, the less the torque." (e.gl a 2-handed wench)
A hammock supported at each end sags in the middle. A simplistic picture of capillary rise is that the water column is being lifted in a similar manner.

Galileo's argument for work being constant: '...the advantage acquired from the length of the lever is nothing but the ability to move all at once that heavy body which could be conducted only in pieces by the same force with equal motion, without the benefit of the lever.'
Benjamin Thompson's dismissal of caloric: 'Heat generated by friction, ...appears to be inexhaustible. It is hardly necessary to add, that anything which any insulated body... can continue to furnish without limitation, cannot possibly be a material substance.
BT's soldiers used tombstones from a cemetery to build a bread oven. Some of the loaves were distributed to members of the local community, unfortunately with the epitaphs of their dead relatives baked backwards into the crusts. After this 'it was considered prudent that he should seek an early opportunity of leaving the country.'

"How To Dunk A Doughnut"