Pan

Part of the Ty Harness "Back to the workshop" series. Mathematics for the
shop-floor worker.

Dedicated to all men and women who have broke their
backs with little or no reward or recognition and perhaps
haven't realised they're solving just as complex problems on the fly
as those overpaid "glory boy desk flying" engineers in the office.

Late in your working life you may find yourself back on the
shop-floor by choice or by necessity and you and your fellow
workers will have to solve problems on the fly. Very often
rules of thumb or a quick bench chalk drawing are the only
tools you have to hand but some of you may be interested on how to
use mathematics to help next time. Ask the boss and they'll think you're useless.
Get it wrong and you'll get all the sh*t jobs from then on. The shop-floor worker
is never rewarded or slapped on the back for solving a problem.

Here's one such problem I encountered a couple of weeks ago. A simple sloping
side pan with specifi