Was that a bonus or bogus assignment? OK, time to research....

Here's a help: http://www.guntheranderson.com/v/data/coldmiss.htm
I recall hearing James Keelaghan's "Cold Missouri Waters" not long ago on Folk Alley.

It was a bonus (not bogus) assignment. So far, I've had some excellent response from my students. Their reports are to be turned in today so I'll have a better idea about how most of the students did with this assignment.

Mann Gulch Disaster 1949. Fire jumping is not common in a country the size of the UK; was the escape fire to clear fuel the new process? There was an awful lot of mathematics, predicting chaotic things does generate it. The plane was a DC3.

http://www.fs.fed.us/rm/pubs/int_gtr299/

Great lyrics and a wonderful conundrum - Googlable with JoLynns cribsheet.

I promise I'll give everyone over there the chance to wake up before I pitch in next time - it's 2.25pm over here.

Wheee! There's that song!

Wish I'd had Ben for Maths at school! I might be able to balance my chequebook!

Ditto, Huw.. wish I had had Ben for Math too!Instead of balancing my chequebook, I somehow magicaly do it in my head and have an inborne "oh no" feeling when I'm reaching the bottom of the pot.
Now days I reach the bottom before about day 12 each month, which saves on having to make all of those mysterious calculations, but makes life a bit challenging, to say the least. But I love a good challenge.
My Aunt's husband's Uncle was a Fire Jumper.

The impact this disaster must have had on 1950s America goes some way to explaining why all those Disney movies set in the West from that period seem to have a forest fire. My childhood seems full of memories of chequered-shirted volunteers shovelling dirt into a wall of flames.
The document I read (http://www.fs.fed.us/rm/pubs/int_gtr299/) is an exciting read for what is a health and safety report, but the tragedy, fear and agony of those killed is still very obvious a lifetime later.
What a great song. A tribute to foreman Dodge, who obviously bore invisible scars to his deathbed. A horrible way to be proved right, and a terrible burden to live with afterwards.

There is a excelent book about the fire
Maclean, Norman (1992). Young Men and Fire. University Of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-22-650061-6.[2]

For excerpt go to http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/500616.html

James has mentioned in concert that his song, Cold Missouri Waters, was inspired by the Norman Maclean book.

On the aside, one of my favorite mathmeticians/physicists, Richard Feynman, loved (before he died) to play the bongos and sing and to laugh with his friends and students. He was musical, a brilliant and merry man, and funny too!
You may remember Feynman as the one who discovered the problem with the Space Shuttle O-rings, by putting a piece of the material in a pair of vice grip pliers during a meeting of scientists and experts in a think tank, and while everyone was deliberating he plunged this clamped piece of O-ring material into a glass of ice water and waited... When he removed the vice grips, the piece of O-ring material stayed compressed, thus illustrating, with this simple demonstration, that the icey conditions on that fateful morning had affected the stability of the O-rings, thus contributing to the tragic Challenger disaster.

The plane was a C-47, not a DC-3. You can't parachute out of a DC-3, too many seats .