DID YOU KNOW THIS?

It was necessary to keep a good supply of cannon balls near the cannon
on sailing ships-of-war. But preventing them from rolling about the
deck was a problem. The best storage method devised was to stack them as
a square-based pyramid, with one ball on top, resting on four, resting on
nine, which rested on sixteen.

Thus, a supply of 30 cannon balls could be stacked in a small area
right next to the cannon. There was only one problem: How to stabilize
the bottom layer? The solution was a metal plate with 16 round
indentations, called for reasons unknown, a monkey. But if this plate
were made of iron, the iron balls would quickly rust to it. The solution
to the rusting problem was to make them of brass. Hence, brass monkeys.

Few landlubbers realize that brass contracts much more and much faster
than iron when chilled. Consequently, when the temperature dropped too
far, the brass indentations would shrink so much that the iron cannon
balls would break loose of the monkey. Thus it was, quite literally, cold
enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey. And all this time, you
thought that was just a vulgar expression, didn't you?

Where you been? everybody knows that

I had never heard of it until today...

On dry land, the obvious way to store cannon-balls seems to be by stacking them. On board ship it's a different matter. A little geometry shows that a pyramid of balls will topple over if the base is tilted by more than 30 degrees. This tilting, not to mention any sudden jolting, would have been commonplace on sailing ships. It just isn't plausible that cannon-balls were stacked this way.

For those wanting a bit more detail, here's the science bit. The coefficient of expansion of brass is 0.000019; that of iron is 0.000012. If the base of the stack were one metre long, the drop in temperature needed to make the 'monkey' shrink relative to the balls by just one millimetre, would be around 100 degrees Celsius. Such a small shrinkage wouldn't have had the slightest effect.

Sorry to bust your balls.............

First Snopes, now Riverduck, aren't any of our myths or reasonable solutions sacred.

sorry to bust another bubble for ya Crazy, but the Tooth Fairy ain't real either. It's actually the Tooth Monkey, and it does have brass balls.

I knew about the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny, I am just worried about somebody proving that Elvis is really dead.

quote:

Tooth Monkey

Let's see if those little girls at photobucket pull this one down. If they do, it's a picture of Boogabama morphed with a monkey or some sort of simian...

Navy denies it, too.

http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq107.htm

Bruce

Elvis is alive I saw him at walmart last week on the laxative row in the pharmacy. now I guess you will tell me there is no factual basis for the colder than a witches titty in a brass brassiere/ Colder than a well digger's ass thing either