Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Film-Guard & Kerosene Lamps

This is topic Film-Guard & Kerosene Lamps in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

To visit this topic, use this URL:
https://ft-forum.com/ft/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=001414

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 09-13-2000, 10:37 AM:

Just a thought here,
My wife and I have a large collection of Kerosene lamps....Aladdin and such. I was wondering if anyone has burnt Film-Guard in a lamp. The advantages should surely be clear. Wick stays cleaner, Chinmeys are aleays clean and scratches filled in. Wicks should be able to burn at least 10 times longer too. Any one else tried this yer? Just wondering?????
Mark

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 09-13-2000, 03:14 PM:

Never heard of such a thing.

Posted by John Walsh (Member # 168) on 09-13-2000, 09:13 PM:

Sort of reminds me of that review in "Road and Track" years ago, when there was a big concern about gas mileage.

The editors looked in the back pages to find all of the ads for products that "...guarantee to increase you mileage by xx%, or your money back!" They bought several of them, and installed them all in one car.

Their mileage actually decreased. They wrote; "... if you add up all the percentage increases shown by the makers of these products, we should not only be saving gasoline, we should actually be producing it!"

Film-Guard's great for film, but I don't think it will do anything for kerosene kamps!

Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 09-14-2000, 09:41 AM:

The fallacy in the logic that a bunch of decreases in the amount of fuel usage would eventually have you producting fuel is that you don't add up all of the individual percentages to calculate the total reduction. This is quite humorous and I remember this exact thing, with regard to cutting gas usage, was done on "Real People", a 70s TV show. They added up a bunch of improvements that could be made and came up with a savings of 120 percent.

To find the correct "total percentage" from a bunch of percentage reductions, divide each percentage by 100, subtract each from 1, multiply all of them together, and subtract the result from 1. Then multiply back by 100. I'll demonstrate. You have four discounts applied to a purchase (or they could be reductions in fuel usage): a 10 percent, 15 percent, a 5 percent, and a 20 percent. What is the net percentage discount (or reduction)? Compute (1 - 0.10) times (1 - 0.15) times (1 - 0.05) times (1 - 0.20), which comes to 0.5814. Subtract that from 1 and you get 0.4186, which multiplied by 100 gives the net discount of 41.86 percent, which is not the 50 percent you'd get if you added the percentages together.

Improvements work similarly. If last week's popcorn profits were 10 percent better than the previous week, and this week's popcorn profits are 10 percent better than last week's, that's a 21 percent improvement over 2 weeks, not 20 percent. (1 + 0.10) times (1 + 0.10) is 1.21. 1.21 - 1 = 0.21. 0.21 times 100 = 21, which is the correct number.