Near Matches
Ignore Exact
Everything
2
salt cellar
(
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 Salt cellars have largely been replaced by salt shakers, or so I thought, but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
Alomancy
Salt
pickling salt
Archimedes
fortune cookie
Modern Times
below the salt
Antonio Salieri
Just eat a sucking candy, you'll be fine
Saltfoot
Saltcellar
Geometrical
Divination
Cellar
Lemma
ASCII art
origami
Log in
or
register
to write something here or to contact authors.