an interesting factoid

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. The student 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 that 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 sqr root (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.

Another Lonely Weekend

So it looks to be another busy weekend. I have twice as many labs to grade and twice as much to get done. Oh well I guess that's life.

One of the things that I am doing this weekend is writing a paper for the Arkansas Department for Higher Education (or some-such). They are sponsoring undergraduate research next year on any subject. One of my profs found out about the capacitive sensor that I built over the summer and he suggested that I submit my designs. If they decide to pick it up then I will get to be paid to do research next semester, which would be really great. I have also decided that I am probably going to pursue an REU next summer, which would also give me some good experience. Until then though I have a very large amount of work to get done.

The weekend review

So after the weekend this is what remains of my list:



Not bad really.

I got to experience what engineering is really about on Saturday. Some of the Business Majors at school came to me and asked me to design a product that would keep steam from building on the bathroom mirror during a hot shower (they had other stipulations such as making it 100% efficient and costing less then a dollar to build but you get the idea). I put off working on it until Saturday morning when I rolled out of bed, walked to the bathroom and decided that it would be a good idea to do a proof of concept. I took a hot shower and thoroughly steamed up the bathroom. Then I took Rex's hairdryer and started using it on the mirror, thinking that this would cause the mirror to de-fog. Much to my delight it worked. Not only did it work, but it worked amazingly well. Inspired by this new discovery I proceeded to go to breakfast. As I was getting my cereal the Business Majors approached me and very bluntly said that they had dropped the project and moved on to something else. Thus I had my first real experience with engineering. That is to say that I experienced complete and utter defeat.

Keeping my head above

So I started a list of everything that I need to get done for this weekend...it's somewhat large.

So...yeah I have a lot to do this weekend.  We will see how much of this I actually get done.

Ultimate Fun

So I just got back from the first ultimate tournament of the year.  We ended up only winning the consolation bracket, but the team definitly learned a lot and improved significantly.  So much of our team is rookies that you can't really expect huge things, espescially compared to big school clubs like OU and UofA.

Just as a note, I have never noticed how much ultimate players drink (excluding students from JBU of course).  There was a dude who played for OU walking around with a huge pickle jar full of kool-aide and everclear.  This was at 10 in the morning.  What is really counter-intuitive is that this only makes them play better.  The guy with the everclear was throwing beautiful forhand rollers the length of the field like it was nothing.  However, they are cranky in the morning.