Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Eye Leveler

Above is an infographic I just made. It describes how to find the height at which to pound a nail when hanging a wired piece of artwork at eye level. The process goes like this:
  1. Measure the vertical length of the picture in inches.
  2. Divide this number in half and add 60 inches (standard eye level).
  3. Measure the distance in inches from the top of the picture to the taut wire and subtract that number.
  4. The resulting number equals how far, in inches, the nail should be from the floor.
In simple algebraic terms, when x is the vertical length of the frame and y is the distance between the top of the frame and the taut hanging-wire, the formula is 1/2x + 60 - y = height from floor. By following this formula, you'll end up with the center of your artwork at eye level.

Thanks to Michael Costanza for helping me clarify my algebraic formula. When I was a freshman in high school I had Shingles, a terrible affliction to the nervous system caused by varicella-zoster, the same virus that causes Chicken Pox. Besides being pretty painful, Shingles is very contagious, so I missed a lot of school. I think it was something like five or six weeks. I was a good student so I was able to catch up with most of my schoolwork pretty easily when I recovered. In Algebra, however, I never really caught up. That might have been because my teacher was pretty bad. Though she was tenured and, therefore, virtually bullet-proof, the next semester she was put on administrative leave and forced to take a few classes on proper teaching technique before being allowed to return to her job. I guess I also just never had a good head for mathematics. One thing I never learned was that, when writing a formula, addition should always come before subtraction. Michael cleared this up with some mnemonic device about his Aunt Sally. Anyway, I'm sure there are tons of other ideas about hanging artwork and algebraic formulas. Any more input or advice is welcome.

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