Posted on 10/30/2007 1:12:53 AM PDT by neverdem
Maybe you’ve seen the television quiz show, “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” and will proudly attest that you are. But how might you stack up against the students in Faye Cascio’s ninth-grade physical science class? Consider the following problems:
1) You fall into a swiftly moving river and are in need of a flotational device. You see a life preserver bobbing three meters downstream of you and another one the same distance behind. Which preserver should you swim toward?
2) A bullet is fired into one end of a spiral tube. When it shoots out of the other end, and forgetting here about the effects of gravity, will the bullet follow a trajectory that (a) is a straight line; (b) begins as a slight curve in the same direction as the spiral tube before gradually straightening out; or (c) begins as a slight curve in the opposite direction of the tube before straightening out?
3) A plane flying into a headwind will have a lower speed, relative to the ground, than it would if it were flying through still air, while a plane traveling with the benefit of a brisk tailwind will have a comparatively greater...
--snip--
“Science is, or should be, about the world, not about science,” said Eugene Levy, a professor of physics and astronomy and the provost of Rice University. “But for too many students, science has been presented as a large series of manipulations that they rarely understand or connect to the reality around them.” If there is a message that he wants his students to take from his introductory science class, he said, “it is to grasp that the world is in fact understandable, that rational inquiry can lead to understanding, and that there’s rarely an excuse to say understanding is beyond them...”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
“Well, Newton’s second law, the famed law of inertia, insists that a body in motion will stay in motion unless something persuades it to do otherwise, and that includes directionality.”
The NYT fact checkers are on their toes, as always.
The NYT writer finished the first year of high school - I’m impressed.
Good catch. (For those not in the know, the first law is the law of inertia.)
In the original article the phrase “rational inquiry can lead to understanding” has the work “lead” underlined as a link. When clicked on, it takes you to a health article on “lead.”
Good work, NYT.
In one biology class last year, for example, Ms. Cascio’s students acquainted themselves with the cell, the nucleus, DNA, proteins, evolution, taxonomy and other bold-faced biology concepts by analyzing meat and seafood products from the supermarket, discovering that, hey, the things that had been sold as scallops were actually pulverized trout pressed into scallop shapes.
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I’ve heard of many ‘proofs’ for evolution and not terribly convinced by any of them but this one takes the cake.
I don’t think they were trying to prove evolution, rather than the people weren’t getting actual scallops.
and that realllllly belongs in a 9th grade science class
One restaurant I worked at in college stamped "scallops" out of skates. Not too bad if they are cooked right, but definitely not scallops.....
1) Fake scallops made out of cookie cutter stamped whitefish is about the most common and poorly known scam out there. - Ask any East Coast teenage who held a summer job at the shore.
Its a valid science project.
2) If the esteemed writer believes that inertia is Newton’s second law, I would like to know what he thinks the first law is.
2a)How does one so poorly educated about this qualify to write a column on it?
What test must one flunk in order to get this job?
This thread reminds me of the following alleged actual question given on a University of Washington engineering mid term. As the story goes, the answer was so “profound” that the Professor shared it with colleagues, which is why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well.
Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)? Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle’s Law, (gas cools off when it expands and heats up when it is compressed) or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following:
“First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate that souls are moving into Hell and the rate they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, lets look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell.
Since there are more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that almost all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle’s Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand as souls are added.
This gives two possibilities:
1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.
2. Of course, if Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.
So which is it? If we accept the postulate given to me by Ms. Teresa Banyan during my Freshman year, “...that it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you.”, and take into account the fact that I still have not succeeded in having sexual relations with her, then, #2 cannot be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and will not freeze.”
So, as the story goes, the student received the only “A” given. Even if made up a good story...
Don’t blame the NYT writers for that; blame the NYT Web page mavens, who put the links in.
I understand that this question could be a bit ambiguous. But if the crosswind is 90 deg from the intended ground track, the speed will be less because the plane has to turn into the wind to stay on track thus inducing a headwind component. If the headwind is 90 deg relative to the longitudinal axis of the plane then its ground speed would be higher.
The same amount of swimming is required to reach either life preserver but I’d still swim to the one behind me as that action would delay by 6 ft my meeting possible danger further down the river compared to choosing the downstream preserver.
As far as the bullet in the spiral, I agree it would exit straight as long as I can assume that there is no uneven heating of the bullet from friction of one side of the bullet against the outside curve’s inner wall of the tube.
Since the wind is coming "side-on" the plane isn't turning into the wind.
So which is it? If we accept the postulate given to me by Ms. Teresa Banyan during my Freshman year, “...that it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you.”, and considering the fact that she and I formally consummated just such a relationship last night, then, #1 cannot be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is endothermic and has, in fact, already become downright chilly, if not yet frozen.”
The article states this: But what about a plane flying through a 90-degree crosswind, a breeze that is buffeting its body side-on?
Since the wind is coming “side-on” the plane isn’t turning into the wind.
I think the poster’s point is that, in order to continue on the desired course, the plane has to continually turn into the wind. Otherwise, it will be blown off course.
Another possibility, not discussed in the problem statement, is that the crosswind was taken into account when the original flight vector was selected ... but that is a different calculation.
Whether it belongs in 9th grade curriculum or not is a different issue. I got the impression from your post was concerned with evolution.
However, I do think that the experiments are more much relevant than a lot of the nonsensical science experiments my high school science classes did in the late 70’s. They might actually remember the process by which they found out that the fish mongers selling scallops were screwing them. I don’t remember a single experiment we did in biology, chemistry or anatomy except the dissections, and that was more the punishment I received when mine went “horribly wrong.”
souls don’t have volume and hell is the hot inner core of the earth about 10,000ºF
evolution, physics whatever...I don’t know what mock scallops have to do with ANYTHING. It reminds me of those ‘arts and crafts’ activities of the fuzzy math crowd.
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