Ponask Results: ... By A Nose

[Elliott Moreton]

> ponask  n  1. Also _ponask effect_. Suction produced when
> strong wind is channelled between adjacent circular
> structures. 2. A triangular array of tents or similar
> structures which reduces this suction
> by Elliott Moreton

> J-J Coté: Suction observed in what way, I wonder? I'm
> picturing a tank farm, and as wind blows by, it's
> necessarily accelerated in order to squeeze through the
> reduced cross-section. Naturally, this causes a drop in
> pressure as per Bernoulli. So where's the suction? Pulling
> inward on the tanks? Who would care? It's a little hard to
> imagine that they'd put up tents in order to reduce this,

I was imagining adjacent yurts being uprooted and bashed into each other 
by the Bernoulli effect, and figured that at least it wasn't obviously 
*wrong* that the problem would be ameliorated by arranging the yurts in a 
triangular array pointing into the wind so that the space between any two 
yurts was screened by another yurt:

 		*
 		  *
 		*   *		<---- wind blows like this ---
 		  *
 		*

> is unclear to me. The tallest building on campus is the
> Green Building (aka Bldg. 54), and it has a large archway
> at ground level. Supposedly when they first built it, the

The legend I heard about the Green Building was that you could work your 
way to the roof by sitting in a vertical groove that ran up the facade, 
bracing your feet and back against opposing inside walls of the groove, 
and scrunching.  I heard someone did this, was met at the top by the 
authorities, arrested, and expelled.  True?

em