In response to the recent staff report on liquid nitrogen in the microwave, http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mnukingnitrogen.html – I think it’s strange that this kid felt it necessary to post his teacher’s SAT scores along with his question. It’s obvious he was trying to make the poor bloke look bad, but since when was there any hard science on the SAT? When I took them last (god, it was just before they recentered them, maybe 94?), the science was basic lab prep, more of a goofus & gallant “don’t burn down the lab” sort of thing. The molecular vibrational mechanics seemed to be sorely lacking.
This reminded me of some of the stuff we (the underacheiving apopular intellectuals, or “smartass geeks,” of Guilderland Central High School), used to do to try and show up our teachers. Here’s a few of my favorite exchanges:
Teach: “You’re in the middle of a frictionless lake --”
Student: “How did I get there?”
Teach: “The best writers write about stuff they know --”
Student: “Like Heinlein?”
Teach: “Exactly.”
My chemistry lab spent an afternoon filling rubber gloves with red foam. Happened to be the same day the physics teacher was discussing the speed of light. “Of course you couldn’t be seen if you travelled the speed of light, but you couldn’t steal anything. The impact would be so great your hand would fall off.” At this point, I dropped the glove, which I had been hiding in my coat sleeve for the old handshake gag. We just kind of stared for a minute before he said something to the affect of “that was so absurd I can’t even laugh.”
Acutally, that’s all I can remember, though I can come up with several instances where we tried to be clever and failed miserably. Ahh, those chairs in the Vice Principal’s office were so comfortable…
dasmegabyte, while you are posting this as a response to a comment in the Staff Report, I think it really belongs in a different forum, such as IMHO, and I’m moving it there.
dasmegabyte, I disagree. The motivation had nothing to do with making the teacher look bad. He was using the SAT scores and MENSA status to indicate how intelligent his teacher was, and yet his teacher didn’t know the answer. This was in order to show that he had tried to get an answer from the most knowledgable sources he could find, and they were unable to help. It is meant to indicate that the answer to the question is not easily found, not to disparage his teacher.
response
Teach: “You mouthed off to the wrong person, so he knocked you out, and used a helicopter to place you there.”
Dex, I disagree with you, too. He didn’t ask for other opinions or recollections, so it really seems more MPSIMS to me.
So you’re saying that Heinlein didn’t know enough physics and mathematics to construct a palusible science fiction scenario, nor did he know enough about people to create believable or sympathetic characters? I would submit that you don’t know enough about Heinlein’s life or work.
There’s actually no science at all on the SAT. The SAT has only math and verbal sections. It’s the ACT that has a science section, and it is pretty basic stuff – mostly just logic and chart-reading IIRC.
maybe dasmegabyte meant that the SAT isn’t an accurate test for testing all the skills one could have. That may be vague, but there’s a science to understanding me.
