Just how is that made?
When I’m in the right mood, I like to watch those shows that tell you how consumer products are made. It’s kinda geeky, but sometimes pretty interesting.
Just watching this afternoon I learned that it only takes 5 minutes for paper to go from hitting the conveyor belt to being cellulose insulation. Five minutes! Holey smokes!
Anyway, no matter what my favourite “how is it made” topic is how the ancient Greeks and Romans pressed olives for oil. See I had to take an “Ancient Technology” class as a part of my Anthro major (I also had to take Chem for my Geo minor …. we don’t talk about that). I still have the text book. Why? Because the stuff in there is just so amazing. Let’s take olive oil.
You get olive oil by pressing whole olives. Simple right? Eh, not so fast there buddy. See the olive still has the pit in it. You crush the pit, your oil becomes bitter and well I don’t think you’d like the penalty for that (think lots of rowing and some dude banging a drum).
Okay, you say, we’ll just gently press the olive with a rock or something (this is ancient Greece and Rome remember). Okay, what about then you have lots of different sizes of olives? Hmm. Solution? A carefully balanced stone wheel that would only press the right amount, but could float up or down depending on the size of the olive!
I’m sure there are fancy ways of doing it today, but I always think of that solution as an example of how you apply basic science to real problems.