[MUD-Dev] Re: Nutirtion and a Resource Question

[Nathan Yospe]

On Fri, 23 May 1997, Jeff Kesselman wrote:

:Right now I'm workign on a political/economic overgame that drives the
:dynamics of this comemrical MUD Im workign on.
:
:I have run into two questions that maybe you nutritionists and historians
:can hel pme with, if you don't mind...
:
:(1) I have a VERY simple set of nutritional catagories... basicly grains,
:meats, fruits, nuts.
:    What proportions of these must a person eat per time period to stay
:helthy?
:    What symptoms do a difficiency of each one create?
:    How long til symptoms first onset?

Grains: Mid range energy, minor nutrient content.
Fruits: Fast energy, large number of nutrients.
Meat: Protein. Healing, building, and maintaining tissues.
Nuts: Protein. Similar to meats.

You are missing:

Vegetables: Raw nutrients, and digestive aid.
Dairy: You need something for bone repair, etc.

:This turns out to be important in the economic overgame because I need to
:establish the markets for each of these.  In addition, in the micro-verse
:of the mud-players these needs should bve reflected to make it all consistent.

:(2) There are basicly 5 kinds of tool construction materails available in this
:    world: wood, iron, obsidian, glass, ceramic
:    I knwo the properties of all but ceramic, which I am not clear on.
:    What can be made from ceramic?  Can you get an edge on a ceramic object?
:    What about tensile strength and weight?

Cool! I get to use my solid state physics knowledge!

Ceramic is not a simple substance. (obsidian, BTW? Really? Weird!) Some
ceramics can hold edges, some are conductors, and some... well, put it
this way. High tech is made of four things. Rubber, Plastic, Silicon, and
Ceramic. Medeival ceramic is a brittle material, suitable for crockery
and little more. It can get an edge, but chips far to easilly to hold it.
It has a weight about equal to lava rock... better example, perhaps, for
you might be a dense wood. Ever heft modern clay after firing? About half
again that density. Modern ceramics range from splinter on a jolt to
material used in bulletproof shielding, and from light as balsa to heavy
as steel. (Well, not quite, but close... we're talking superconductors in
this case, though.)

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Nathan F. Yospe - University of Hawaii Dept of Physics - yospe at hawaii.edu