Re: [Phys-L] amusing electrostatics exercise

[curtis osterhoudt <flutzpah@yahoo.com>]

Bingo: a real-world skill that everyone should have. Ideally, students recognize ambiguities and under-specified problems, and are comprehensive enough in their dealing with them that they make clear *which* version they're attempting to address. 

It doesn't make posing such problems a *necessarily good* thing to do, especially if the person(s) posing the problem don't recognize the ambiguities. On the other hand, everyone has to deal with these problems all the time, in real-life scienterrific situations and because we deal with messy, uncertain humans and messy, uncertain physical situations where we can't afford to sit around for hours at a time and take enough data to whittle things down to their essences.



> ________________________________
> From: John Denker <jsd@av8n.com>
> To: Phys-L@Phys-L.org 
> Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2013 1:19 PM
> Subject: Re: [Phys-L] amusing electrostatics exercise
>
>
> [...]
>
> > This was a prob. in the qualifying exam at UCSC.
>
> It looks to me like an ESP exam.  The only way to come up with a
> definite answer is to read the mind of the person who posed the
> question, in order to divine what was intended.