The aim of this article is to show that philosophy of Blaise Pascal can be interpreted as defeating skepticism not by supernatural intuition but by pragmatic reasoning. For this purpose, I present in the article: (1) the geometrical method as the best available method for justifying statements, (2) circumstances that make human reason fallible, (3) the defense against skepticism pointing out that besides reasoning we still have intuitive knowledge of first principles, (4) remarks indicating that intuition cannot be a source of certainty, (5) the resulting contradictions are not problematic for Pascal because they serve the apologetic purpose of his work, and that the skeptical arguments presented do not prevent rational action.

The paper presents a model of a rapping system of an electrostatic precipitator. The rapping system consists of a set of collecting electrodes hanging on a suspension bar and braced together in a brushing bar. The suspension and brushing bars are modeled using the rigid finite element method, while the collecting plates are modeled using the hybrid method. The method combines the rigid finite element method with the classical finite element method. As a result, the mass matrix is diagonal. Some results of numerical simulations concerning free vibrations of the collecting plates and the influence of the number of elements, into which the plate is divided, on the vibrations of the rapping system are presented.