Of the many things I love about the Space Shuttle program, one of the sillier ones is that a significant part of the launch profile calls for "throttle at 104%".
Turned out the engine could safely run at higher power than expected, but the engineers kept the original scale. One abort scenario for multiple engine failure specifies throttle at 109%.
@starkatt The basic copper wire that you get from essentially any source (called "ETP" or "Electrolytic tough-pitch" copper) has a conductivity rating of 101% IACS (International annealed copper standard (conductivity)), simply because purer, slightly higher-conductivity copper has become economically available since the standard was made (originally defined such that 100% was the conductivity of generic copper wire on the market)
@starkatt incidentally I have no idea why it's called electrolytic tough-pitch. there is probably a reason.
@Felthry One thing I've noticed is that the residential copper wire I use at work comes in a few slightly different colors. I'm guessing it's loose controls on purity from recyclers :)
@starkatt Could be; could be surface contamination. Could be insulation residue on the surface of the copper. Could be just different lighting you're looking at them under! Who knows.
Copper is good, I know that much. It's fortuitous that such a (comparatively) common metal a) is one of the easiest metals to work with, strong yet ductile and b) has one of the highest conductivities of all metals out there (only silver is better)
@Felthry gosh it makes me really happy to find another fan of copper :)
