Momentous Peanuts
- By : Nat
- Category : Classic finds, Reviews
I wonder what it was like to be working your way through the college textbook Fundamentals of Physics, eight hundred and some pages of very tiny and dry-looking type, when you get to the problem set for chapter 8 (“Conservation of Linear Momentum”) and see there on page 150 the illustration for problem 12(2):
No, not that one – that’s the illustration for problem 19(3)! I mean the other image on that page!
No, not that one either. That’s for problem 13(2). I’m talking about the one for problem 12(2).
Yes, that’s the one I’m talking about. Sitting there in the midst of this well-regarded spider-womper of a text book is not just a Peanuts picture, but an original Schulz illustration done specifically for the book. The problem is on the question of the effect of the speed of a 40 pound flatboat of a 10 pound dog walking eight feet along it while it is on one of those conveniently frictionless rivers that exist only in the pages of physics textbooks.
The Peanuts characters have shown up in many textbooks, of course, but generally not at the college level, nor with original by-Schulz-himself work for the project.
Fundamentals of Physics has gone through a variety of editions and printings, and I’m not sure all of which have this particular illustration. I knew I wanted a copy, so I asked my pals the research center part of the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center which edition they had (I think we used their copy for the picture in my book The Peanuts Collection on page 27) and hunted down a copy of that edition… which then had to be shipped from Australia (it’s not as easy to find a specific 1974 textbook as you might think!) Only it looks like I’ve ended up with a different edition than they have, but that’s okay – I’ve got the picture, which was my goal.
I told the Australian bookstore to ship it slow and cheap, and it took even longer than I thought it would; I had based my calculations on it coming across a frictionless ocean.
Ah well. Back to my shopping, still have to work on my gift for Mrs. AAUGH Blogger. If you’re still looking for stuff, here are some good deals on DVD sets:
- Roots for twenty bucks
- The Complete Studio 60 for eighteen bucks
- The complete M*A*S*H for seventy bucks
