Our cuckoo collections!
QUESTION In Lubeck, Germany, there is a museum dedicated to marzipan. What other obscure museums are there?
Britain has its fair share of weird and wonderful museums, but one of the strangest has to be the Dog Collar Museum. Situated within the walls of Leeds Castle near Maidstone, Kent, it is home to more than 100 collars spanning six centuries.
The earliest example dates back to the late 15th century and is a Spanish mastiff’s iron collar, which was worn for protection against the wolves and bears roaming europe at the time.
Other collars range from 16th-century German iron collars with fearsome spikes and ornate gilt collars of the Baroque period to 19th-century silver collars and 20th-century examples made from tyres, beads and plastic.
The bulk of the exhibition was donated to the museum by Mrs Gertrude Hunt in 1977 in memory of her husband, historian John Hunt, both avid collectors.
exhibits at the Derwent Pencil Museum include a World War II secret pencil collection and the Guinness World record-holding biggest colouring pencil in the world, which is nearly 26ft long.
Cuckooland Museum, in Tabley, Cheshire, has more than 600 cuckoo clocks. For four decades, brothers roman and Maz Piekarski have been collecting clocks made in the Black Forest over the past 300 years.
The British Dental Museum in London is home to 25,000 items from the 17th century to the present day. It’s not one for the faint-hearted.
The world-famous British Lawnmower Museum in Southport, Merseyside, has 250 items of gardening machinery dating back to the 1830s.
On display are lawnmowers once owned by Prince Charles, Princess Diana, guitarist Brian May and Tv star Paul O’Grady.
Mick Forrest, Letchworth Garden City, Herts. before our driving holiday along the famous U.S. route 66, my wife and I watched Billy Connolly’s Tv series showing many of the interesting things to be seen on the way.
One was the Devil’s rope Museum in McLean, Texas, specialising in barbed wire. It features more than 1,000 varieties and explores the role barbed wire played in the settlement of the U.S.
I have to admit that though we saw many of the other attractions in Billy’s travelogue, when we finally got to this museum, we drove straight past.
Phil Alexander, Farnborough, Hants. perhaps the strangest museum of the lot is the Avanos Hair Museum. A small, dark cave in rural Turkey features a collection of locks of hair from more than 16,000 women.
Avanos is famous for its ancient ceramics tradition. When a close friend of Turkish potter Galip Korukcu moved away from the town, she left a lock of hair as a memento. From that time, it became customary for every woman who visited his workshop, Chez Galip, which is above the cave, to do the same.
Edward Chavey, Bracknell, Berks.
QUESTION What is meant by torque?
Torque is a measure of the turning or twisting power of a rotational force about the axis of rotation.
It is measured in Newton Metres: Newton refers to the strength of the force and metres to the radius of the arc through which the force turns.
One Newton is the force required to accelerate a mass of one kilogram by one metre per second squared.
A typical use in everyday life is the torque wrench used by mechanics and engineers to ensure nuts and bolts are tightened sufficiently to hold parts safely together without over-tightening and weakening the fixings.
Your electric screwdriver may well have a torque adjustment to limit the force used to drive smaller screws to avoid breaking their shanks or driving them in too deeply.
Another common use of the term is to measure the useful power delivered by vehicle engines.
Brake horsepower (bhp) measures the maximum power that an engine can deliver, but most engines only achieve this close to their maximum safe operating speed. Power output of an engine is usually a rising curve charting power against engine speed (rpm).
For practical driving, torque is more useful. engines usually reach their maximum torque much lower in their rev range. A well-designed engine will exhibit a much flatter chart of torque against engine speed. Luxury cars have big engines with high torque values over a wide range of engine speeds to enable an effortless drive.
Torque available is more important for acceleration than maximum power. Modern diesel cars will often accelerate faster than petrol cars with similar engine capacity. That is because diesel engines produce higher maximum torque and more torque over a wider span of engine speeds than petrol equivalents.
However, modern high technology combined with electronics is tearing up these principles.
One of the major benefits of an electric car is that the motor develops its maximum torque from rest up to its maximum operating speed. Modern electric cars accelerate very quickly.
A. R. Cater, Grays, Essex.
QUESTION Are there any jokes in the Bible?
TO ADD to the previous answers, in Isaiah 28:20, we read: ‘The bed is too short to stretch out on, the blanket too narrow to wrap around you.’
This is to describe the state of those who depend on others than God. The imagery is humorous tinged with a good dose of pity. Imagine a 6ft person lying on a 5ft bed or covered with a 5ft cover on a cold winter night.
Dr Ahmes L. Pahor, Birmingham.
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