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faceless
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Joined: 25 Apr 2006
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 Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2007 11:25 pm Post subject: top quality smart-arses |
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The following concerns a question in a physics degree exam at the University of Copenhagen:
"Describe how to determine the height of a skyscraper with a barometer."
One student replied:
"You tie a long piece of string to the neck of the barometer, then lower the barometer from the roof of the skyscraper to the ground. The length of the string plus the length of the barometer will equal the height of the building."
This highly original answer so incensed the examiner that the student was failed immediately. The student appealed on the grounds that his answer was indisputably correct, and the university appointed an independent arbiter to decide the case. The arbiter judged that the answer was indeed correct, but did not display any noticeable knowledge of physics. To resolve the problem it was decided to call the student in and allow him six minutes in which to provide a verbal answer that showed at least a minimal familiarity with the basic principles of physics.
For five minutes the student sat in silence, forehead creased in thought. The arbiter reminded him that time was running out, to which the student replied that he had several extremely relevant answers, but couldn't make up his mind which to use. On being advised to hurry up the student replied as follows:
"Firstly, you could take the barometer up to the roof of the skyscraper, drop it over the edge, and measure the time it takes to reach the ground. The height of the building can then be worked out from the formula H = 0.5g x t squared. But bad luck on the barometer."
"Or if the sun is shining you could measure the height of the barometer, then set it on end and measure the length of its shadow. Then you measure the length of the skyscraper's shadow, and thereafter it is a simple matter of proportional arithmetic to work out the height of the skyscraper."
"But if you wanted to be highly scientific about it, you could tie a short piece of string to the barometer and swing it like a pendulum, first at ground level and then on the roof of the skyscraper. The height is worked out by the difference in the gravitational restoring force T =2 pi sqr root (l /g)."
"Or if the skyscraper has an outside emergency staircase, it would be easier to walk up it and mark off the height of the skyscraper in barometer lengths, then add them up."
"If you merely wanted to be boring and orthodox about it, of course, you could use the barometer to measure the air pressure on the roof of the skyscraper and on the ground, and convert the difference in millibars into feet to give the height of the building."
"But since we are constantly being exhorted to exercise independence of mind and apply scientific methods, undoubtedly the best way would be to knock on the janitor's door and say to him 'If you would like a nice new barometer, I will give you this one if you tell me the height of this skyscraper'."
The student was Niels Bohr, the only Dane to win the Nobel Prize for physics.
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world class smart-arse!  |
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luke
Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Location: by the sea
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| Posted: Sun Sep 30, 2007 12:07 am Post subject: |
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quality  |
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major.tom
Macho Business Donkey Wrestler
Joined: 21 Jan 2007
Location: BC, Canada
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| Posted: Mon Oct 01, 2007 4:43 am Post subject: |
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Brilliant! Stick that in your pipe, Physics prof.
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Aja
Reggae Ambassador
Joined: 24 Jun 2006
Location: Lost Londoner ..Nr Philly. PA
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| Posted: Mon Oct 01, 2007 5:02 am Post subject: |
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| HA HA Love It ;) |
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Lostinthestates
Joined: 28 Feb 2007
Location: Bethlehem, USA
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| Posted: Mon Oct 01, 2007 5:10 pm Post subject: |
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Very good  |
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eefanincan
Admin
Joined: 29 Apr 2006
Location: Canada
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| Posted: Mon Oct 01, 2007 11:46 pm Post subject: |
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| Excellent! It just goes to show that sometimes the simple answer is the right one. |
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Twirley
Joined: 29 Apr 2006
Location: North Carolina
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| Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2007 3:03 am Post subject: |
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I just asked my husband the question (albeit he's just drunk a full bottle of red wine by himself) and he gave the boring and orthodox answer. I had to laugh at him, and he had no idea why. Priceless!!!
Got to say, my physics isn't that good...not sure I would have known any physics-related answers...!
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faceless
admin
Joined: 25 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2007 1:42 pm Post subject: |
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| Twirley wrote: | I just asked my husband the question (albeit he's just drunk a full bottle of red wine by himself) and he gave the boring and orthodox answer. I had to laugh at him, and he had no idea why. Priceless!!!
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haha, excellent - did you tell him later or leave him wondering? |
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luke
Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Location: by the sea
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| Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2007 2:29 pm Post subject: |
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well, we've had top quality smart arses, how about a drug taking smart arse?
| Quote: | Nobel Prize genius Crick was high on LSD when he discovered the secret of life
Francis Crick, the Nobel Prize-winning father of modern genetics, was under the influence of LSD when he first deduced the double-helix structure of DNA nearly 50 years ago.
The abrasive and unorthodox Crick and his brilliant American co-researcher James Watson famously celebrated their eureka moment in March 1953 by running from the now legendary Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge to the nearby Eagle pub, where they announced over pints of bitter that they had discovered the secret of life.
Crick, who died ten days ago [2004-07-28], aged 88, later told a fellow scientist that he often used small doses of LSD, then an experimental drug used in psychotherapy, to boost his powers of thought. He said it was LSD, not the Eagle's warm beer, that helped him to unravel the structure of DNA, the discovery that won him the Nobel Prize.
Despite his Establishment image, Crick was a devotee of novelist Aldous Huxley, whose accounts of his experiments with LSD and another hallucinogen, mescaline, in The Doors Of Perception and Heaven And Hell became cult texts for the hippies of the Sixties and Seventies. In the late Sixties, Crick was a founder member of Soma, a legalise-cannabis group named after the drug in Huxley's novel Brave New World. He even put his name to a famous letter to The Times in 1967 calling for a reform in the drugs laws.
It was through his membership of Soma that Crick inadvertently became the inspiration for the biggest LSD manufacturing conspiracy the world has ever seen the multimillion-pound drug factory in a remote farmhouse in Wales that was smashed by the Operation Julie raids of the late Seventies.
Crick's involvement with the gang was fleeting but crucial. The revered scientist had been invited to the Cambridge home of freewheeling American writer David Solomon, a friend of hippie LSD guru Timothy Leary, who had come to Britain in 1967 on a quest to discover a method for manufacturing pure THC, the active ingredient of cannabis.
It was Crick's presence in Solomon's social circle that attracted a brilliant young biochemist, Richard Kemp, who soon became a convert to the attractions of both cannabis and LSD. Kemp was recruited to the THC project in 1968, but soon afterwards devised the world's first foolproof method of producing cheap, pure LSD. Solomon and Kemp went into business, manufacturing 'acid' in a succession of rented houses before setting up their laboratory in a cottage on a hillside near Tregaron, Carmarthenshire, in 1973. It is estimated that Kemp manufactured drugs worth £2.5 million — an astonishing amount in the Seventies — before police stormed the building in 1977 and seized enough pure LSD and its constituent chemicals to make two million LSD 'tabs'.
The arrest and conviction of Solomon, Kemp and a string of co-conspirators dominated the headlines for months. I was covering the case as a reporter at the time and it was then that I met Kemp's close friend, Garrod Harker, whose home had been raided by police but who had not been arrested. Harker told me that Kemp and his girlfriend Christine Bott by then in jail were hippie idealists who were completely uninterested in the money they were making.
They gave away thousands to pet causes such as the Glastonbury pop festival and Release.
"They have a philosophy," Harker told me at the time. "They believe industrial society will collapse when the oil runs out and that the answer is to change people's mindsets using acid. They believe LSD can help people to see that a return to a natural society based on self-sufficiency is the only way to save themselves.
"Dick Kemp told me he met Francis Crick at Cambridge. Crick had told him that some Cambridge academics used LSD in tiny amounts as a thinking tool, to liberate them from preconceptions and let their genius wander freely to new ideas. Crick told him he had perceived the double-helix shape while on LSD.
"It was clear that Dick Kemp was highly impressed and probably bowled over by what Crick had told him. He told me that if a man like Crick, who had gone to the heart of human existence, had used LSD, then it was worth using. Crick was certainly Dick Kemp's inspiration."
Shortly afterwards I visited Crick at his home, Golden Helix, in Cambridge. He listened with rapt, amused attention to what I told him about the role of LSD in his Nobel Prize-winning discovery. He gave no intimation of surprise. When I had finished, he said: "Print a word of it and I'll sue." |
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faceless
admin
Joined: 25 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Mon Mar 30, 2009 8:59 pm Post subject: |
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eirebadboy
Joined: 02 Apr 2009
Location: Derry
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| Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2009 7:12 pm Post subject: |
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| World class smart arse indeed! |
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funkyfunkpants
Joined: 05 Oct 2008
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| Posted: Fri Jul 17, 2009 4:33 pm Post subject: |
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Some of these are already posted above but I really liked Peter Nguyen's at the end
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faceless
admin
Joined: 25 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Fri Jul 17, 2009 4:54 pm Post subject: |
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| haha, the 2girls1cup one is excellent - why it was failed I've no idea! |
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faceless
admin
Joined: 25 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Thu Oct 28, 2010 2:14 am Post subject: |
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