Mike E. wrote in part:
|
| Would you please relieve me from reading your minds by
| telling me whether the prof should or should not give credit
| to the students who viewed the 3-m walk as 3 m relative to the dock.
|
I wrote:
"I would in general agree with Ken's response, unless . . .
Unless this was essentially either a worked out problem in class or
example in the text that used the same style wording."
I hope this got inferred as my suggesting that the professor should give
the students credit for the problem; except under the circumstances
stated, if they existed.
John D. as part of this discussion wrote in part:
"Obvious? Obvious??? Whether or not it "should" have been obvious, it
wasn't obvious. If it really had been obvious, we wouldn't be having
thism conversation. The professor thought it would be obvious ... but
he was wrong about this."
Yes, we might be having this discussion even if it had been really
obvious. I've seen students try to "lawyer" their responses to test
questions under cases where it was clear that they didn't understand the
physics of the problem and where the problems were unambigous (and/or at
least reasonably so). At some point a judgement call is called for in
these instances.
Under the case being considered, without additional data (such as what I
suggested), I think the judgement should fall in favor of the student
response on this question as worded in the message Mike E. originally
wrote.
John D. also wrote in part:
"As a corollary, any statement where the meaning depends on what
reference frame is assumed is not merely ambiguous; it is defective. It
is unphysical."
I'll make the obvious disclaimer that this is true unless you are asking
a frame dependent question; in which case one should make clear in what
frame the problem should be analyzed. (I'm sure John meant to exclude
such situations in the above comment.)
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