Re: tuesday funny-- something to make you smile -- I hope :>)

[Hugh Haskell <hhaskell@MINDSPRING.COM>]

I believe this has come through before. It's an old, but good, story,
but I don't think that it had anything to do with Bohr. In the first
place, that wasn't Bohr's style. While Bohr was noted to have a good
sense of humor, he was a serious student and it isn't likely that he
would have played those kind of games with his professors, whom he
respected greatly and who would not have been amused in that day and
age. furthermore, if it were true and as widely known as making a
joke about it would imply, it would almost certainly be repeated in
one or more of his many biographies, and I do not think that it is.

It's a good story, and it makes some important points about "out of
the box" thinking, and I like to tell it to my physics classes, but I
don't think Bohr was the student.

Hugh

> My Dad forwarded this to me from one of his mailing list, and I
> thought it was wonderful. All you physicist have probably heard of it,
> if it is true.
>
> Enjoy and have a great day.
>
> Lisa Gardner (age 9)
>
>
> ----------------------
>
>  Subject: tuesday funny
>
>
> I make no claims to validity, I don't wanna spend the time to track
> down the
> answers.
>
> <forwards snipped>
>
>  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. He 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 which 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 sqrroot (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.

--

Hugh Haskell
<mailto://hhaskell@mindspring.com>

Let's face it. People use a Mac because they want to, Windows because they
have to..
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