Spotted here:
The most interesting thing about the Queen Mary, which for several decades was the largest passenger ship ever built, is not the 20-foot propellers so perfectly balanced that they could be spun with a flick of the wrist;
Spun with a flick of the wrist? Really?
Just how much angular momentum can a flick of the wrist impart?
And how would one mount one of the screws in order to test this claim? Certainly not on the ship, where the friction of the great bearings (and packings and whatnot) would discourage casual spinning, regardless of balance.
Maybe they could be nudged around by hand while mounted on a special balancing fixture, perhaps with air bearings? But the language of the quoted bit suggests quite a bit more than "it moved a little when pushed."
Comments