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Re: [Phys-l] fun ill-posed questions



So here is a physics teacher who wants to let us know that in his opinion all beautiful blondes are dumb? Why would I want to think that this is a devious posting of an rural (not even urban) legend)? Is the physics teacher who postedthis a retreaded football coach by some chance?


On Thu, 26 Oct 2006, Bob Sciamanda wrote:

I was forwarded the following test question & answer. It may be an actual event or just a fictitious joke. Anyway, it's worth a laugh!

The question Included a drawing of a right triangle. The legs of the triangle are labeled "3 cm" and "4 cm"; the hypotenuse is labeled "x" . The instruction with the drawing queried: "Find x".

The student's answer was a text balloon saying "Here it is!" with an arrow pointing to the "x " symbol which labelled the hypotenuse in the figure.:

Here is the text forwarded to me, along with the (attached) drawing:

Attached is problem 3 on a geometry examination. It is the solution
submitted by a beautiful blonde student. It is our understanding that after careful
scrutiny, the student was given credit for the answer by the teacher. When hearing
of this the Board of Education warned math teachers to be more explicit in the
wording of examination problems but was hesitant to suggest how.

Bob Sciamanda
Physics, Edinboro Univ of PA (Em)
http://www.winbeam.com/~trebor/
trebor@winbeam.com
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