Working on “Softly Softly” meant a rig on the Tuesday morning – then various breaks, with a stagger through starting (as I recall) about 14:00 and going on to about 22:30. (The following day, Wednesday, followed the pattern – notes, run-through, lunch, notes, run-through, supper, line up, transmission (20:00 to 20:50 with retakes for the film recording sold overseas)). We worked in studios TC3 or TC4.
One Tuesday a puzzle was presented to the crew (by John Henshall (as I recall)). The problem was:
“Two cylinders of equal diameter intersect at right angles. What is the volume common to both?”
As far as I can work out, the problem initially came from The Nuffield Foundation Mathematics Teaching Project firstly to John Boucher and then to crew 14 – and then to us. Those of a mathematical leaning will probably recognise that the solution can be found using integral calculus. I took a different approach. My “A” levels had been in Latin, French and German (failed Latin – would probably pass today!) (although I went to the school Electronics Society, Chemistry Society, and I founded the school Film Society). So the calculus solution did not spring immediately to mind.
Basically, I made up a model using card and camera tape (of course), and it struck me that parts of the shape looked roughly sinusoidal. So then I made up four pieces from plasticard, each based on the sine wave (from tables) – and glued these together: bingo, the shape required. The surface area is 8 times the area under a sine wave cycle (-90 degrees to + 90 degrees) and the volume become this times a constant, which, when solved, gives
16 r[cubed]
—————-
3
Here is the shape – and the box it lives in, still held together by camera tape after nearly 50 years …
A number of people on the crews offered solutions to the problem, and a letter back from the originator at the Nuffield Foundation (dated 21 Feb 1966) read (in part)
“…Your solution your cameramen offered struck me as elegant and attractive…”
Crew 14 had the original letter.
I personally got a letter from a Donald Mansfield (dated 16 March 1966), saying “Undoubtedly your template is sinusoidal …”
Some time later I was sitting on a rostrum during a “Softly Softly” Stagger Through, and suddenly decided that I would go to college for Teacher Training. One of the places I went for interview was Liverpool – and I thought that, even if I did not get the place at college, being a keen photographer, I would have some pictures of Liverpool – at that time, the centre of things, with The Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers and the whole Merseybeat scene. So I went up the evening before and in the morning of the interview I went down to Pier Head and looked about me. It was really the strangest feeling – I said to myself, “I am not going to take any photographs, because I am going to BE here!”.
I went to the interview in the afternoon, and during it I showed my solution to the problem – which the tutor kept, and returned with a letter (dated 27 Jan 1967) saying “Thank you for the enclosed. It is very interesting”. And so I eventually I got an Honours degree in Mathematics, Psychology and Education from the University of Liverpool – in part because of something to keep us crew amused during the stagger!
