(thing) by anthropod Tue Nov 13 2001 at 21:09:27
  • A small dish, usually with a cover and often with a small spoon, which was used to hold salt crystals in the days before the addition of moisture-absorbing agents allowed salt to be sold in powdered form. Salt cellars have largely been replaced by salt shakers, or so I thought, but The Oolong Man says salt cellar and salt shaker are often used interchangeably.
  • A salt cellar is also an origami figure which we used to make as children and use as a silly and simple divination device (not alomancy, though). It involves folding a piece of paper such that it forms four pointed shapes which together make a pyramid. If you flip it over it functions as a kind of container, like a salt cellar I guess, but we used to put it on our fingers and play a fortune telling game with it. As I find these things impossible to describe in words, and as I'm hopeless at ASCII art, I refer you to http://origami.kvi.nl/models/toys/00sub/fortune.htm for instructions on how to make the figure.
  • The salt cellar or salinon is a geometrical problem introduced by Archimedes in his Book of Lemmas. It has to do with two figures, one shaped kind of like a dish and the other a circle, which Archimedes said always have the same area, although they don't appear to at first glance; again, it's best that I refer you to a picture of the figure and the proof: http://jwilson.coe.uga.edu/emt669/Student.Folders/Perkins.Catherine/Salt.Cellar/salt.html
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