Re: A TRUE/FALSE question for your professors

[Richard Grandy <rgrandy@ruf.rice.edu>]

I thought I discerned the crucial question, but the wording did not make it
clear whether the rock was in the boat and the "occupant" was in the boat
dropping it, or whether the "occupant" was the owner of the pool and was
picking up a rock from the rock garden and dropping it in the pool.

It makes all the difference.



At 5:30 PM -0600 1/28/98, brian whatcott wrote:
> Thanks to Richard for reminding me to actually think about this puzzle.
>
> I am pleased to have worked for a company in its growth hey-day - Digital
> Equipment in the 70's.
> As well as the female component assemblers at the Mill who were
> millionairesses on account of their initial stock positions - which grew in
> value like topsy - part of the legend of that company was a story about one
> of its founders.
>
> The details related by Ken grow blurry - it was either a general or a
> financier (perhaps both) later associated with funding DEC as a startup who
> had been asked to take a position in a startup intended to float
> particularly rare hardwood baulks downstream from an upper Amazonian
> riverside site (a highly unPC proposal these days...) to a mill.
> Here was his crucial question:
>   "Will the logs float?"
>
> - and of course they would not.
>
> And now I think you should be able to discern the crucial question in this
> water level puzzle:
> (I'll space down to give your imagination a chance...)
>
>
>
>
>
>
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> Question:
> "Does the rock float?"
>
> Regards
> Brian
>
>
> At 13:16 1/28/98 -0600, Richard Grandy wrote:
> > where was the rock before it was dropped into the water?
> >
> >
> > > A boat is floating in a small swimming pool and the occupant drops a large
> > > rock into the water. Will the level of water in the pool rise, fall or
> > > remain the same?
>
> brian whatcott <inet@intellisys.net>
> Altus OK