science

Stotham

Stotham is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Stotham rather than just read about it. In short: Stotham is a fictional town in Massachusetts, United States which was invented by architect Hubert G. Ripley (1869–1942) of the firm Ripley and LeBoutillier in an article he wrote for the April 1920 issue (vol.

Key takeaways

Stotham belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Stotham to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Stotham from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Stotham is a fictional town in Massachusetts, United States which was invented by architect Hubert G. Ripley (1869–1942) of the firm Ripley and LeBoutillier in an article he wrote for the April 1920 issue (vol. VI, No. 2) of the White Pine Series of Architectural Monographs as the purported locale of a number of photographs of New England structures which had been edited out of earlier location-specific issues of the bi-monthly series. Ripley's article about the town was printed under an epigram from Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard":

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray; Along the cool sequester'd vale of life

They kept the noiseless tenor of their way. The introduction presented a description of the character and history of Stotham invented by Ripley. According to his introduction, "When Zabdiel Podbury fled from Stoke-on-Tritham in the Spring of 1689 with Drusilla Ives, taking passage on the bark Promise, sailing for Massachusetts Bay, it was not realized at the time that, from this union, and the joint labors of the Penthesilean pair, the village of Stotham (so named by them in memory of their autochthonous abode) would in later days come to be regarded as a typical example, although, perhaps, not so well known, of the unspoiled New England Village." Some of the town's buildings were credited to fictional "town architect" Ruben Duren. The "Rogers Mansion" was given a legend of buried treasure and a ghost. The fiction was uncovered by catalogers at the Library of Congress in the 1940s. Department head Leicester Bodine Holland asked Russell B. Whitehead, editor of the White Pine series, about the mysterious town, eliciting a full explanation. The matter was explored in a 1964 article in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians and explained in the 1987 reprinting of the monographs as The Architectural Treasures of Early America.

Edifices shown Only a few of the edifices described in the "Stotham" monograph have been positively identified. The "House on Sandy Point" is actually the Joseph Lynde House in Melrose, Massachusetts. The "Salmon White House" is actually the Abram Mitchell House in Chester, Connecticut. The "Podbury-Ives House" is an unnamed house from Bedford, Massachusetts. The "Heman Billings House" is, in truth, the Champion House of East Haddam, Connecticut. The "Uriel Underwood House" is the Wheeler House in Oxford, New Hampshire. and the "First Meeting House of the Stotham Congregational Society" is, in fact, the North Congregational Church of Woodbury, Connecticut.

References

Citro, Joseph A. (2005) "The Confounding Fathers of Stotham" in Weird New England: Your Travel Guide to New England's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets. New York, NY: Sterling Publishing Company. p. 124 ISBN 1-4027-3330-5 Harbeson, J.F. (May, 1964). “Stotham, The Massachusetts Hoax, 1920.“ The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. 23(2): pp. 111–112 Stotham Massachusetts entry in the on-line Museum of Hoaxes

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Stotham

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Stotham claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Stotham before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Stotham ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Stotham

In research: Stotham appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Stotham in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Stotham is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1920s hoaxes, Hoaxes in the United States, Phantom geographical features, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Stotham outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Stotham in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Stotham means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Stotham out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Stotham in simple terms?

Why does Stotham matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Stotham?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Stotham.