Clever student writes two words and passes exam with an A

[Spiny_Norman]

@BayleDomon

I don’t know if Plynck reproduced the actual question with the correct numbers, but it may be that the actual question had slightly different numbers. Plynck’s numbers indicate the two trains meet just a little over two hours (assuming I calculated it correctly), and it’s possible that the numbers on the actual test were designed to make them meet in 2.5 hours. Regardless, I think that the trains wind up being irrelevant to the question; all that needs be known is that the bird is flying at a constant rate of 60 mph for 2.5 hours.

The version I’ve seen (this one being a dog running back and forth between two people walking towards each other) is supposed to be easy in that you don’t have to compute the dog’s traveled path as a sum of decreasing-length zigs and zags (hard!), you just compute the time needed for the pedestrians to meet (easy) and use the dog’s known speed to get the distance traveled (also easy).

(The urban legend has someone posed this question to von Neumann, who (of course) came up with the answer in mere seconds. On being congratulated on seeing through the trick - “most people think they need to sum an infinite number of path segments”, he’s rumored to have said “But that’s what I did!”.)

My favourite version of that story is the Swedish math professor, whose first thought was “But - won’t we end up with a rotating dog?”.

[tomndebb]

My Dad had an actual test like this at GMI.

On a metallurgy test, the prof laid out that a bar of steel, x inches long, y inches wide, and z inches thick, with alloy compositions of f, g, and h, cast at a temprature of q, and on and on and on for another page, is subjected to m pounds of tension, stretching it to 97.835% of its memory length. If the tension is eliminated after b hours, how long with it then be?

Dad started out like everyone else in the class, messing with all the numbers, had his “duh!” moment, and wrote “same size” and handed in the paper. He got a 99% because the prof felt that no one ever deserved 100%.

(The trick being that any metal stretched to less than its memory length (elastic length? it’s been 40 years and I don’t recall the exact term), will return to its original size as soon as the force is removed.)

[manx]

@Tomcat

2. A student in a huge freshman English lit class (I’ve heard stories of classes like this at CU with over 400 students) is scribbling away on the timed final exam after the professor rings the bell and says to “Put down your pencils now.” All of the other hundreds of student put their papers in a stack on the desk and leave, but this guy is still writing away. Finally he is the last person in the room and goes to hand in his test. The professor says “No, you fail, you deliberately kept writing after I told you to stop.” The student starts yelling at the professor in a very sarcastic voice “Do you know who I am?!? Do you?” The professor puts a smug smile on his face and says “No. I do not.” The student takes his exam, shoves it in the middle of the stack of tests, turns around and walks out.

This was an ad that ran few years ago for Instant Kiwis (scratchies). At the end of the ad the student yoinked the apple off the teachers desk - really funny stuff!

[zut]

@tomndebb

(The trick being that any metal stretched to less than its memory length (elastic length? it’s been 40 years and I don’t recall the exact term), will return to its original size as soon as the force is removed.)

“Elastic limit” is the term. (As a completely off-topic aside, the Wikipedia page on “elastic limit,” which is Google hit #1, is for shit. “The reverse of elastic limit is ‘proportional limit’, which is obey Hooke’s law”? Jesus.)

[Hostile_Dialect]

@zut

“Elastic limit” is the term. (As a completely off-topic aside, the Wikipedia page on “elastic limit,” which is Google hit #1, is for shit. “The reverse of elastic limit is ‘proportional limit’, which is obey Hooke’s law”? Jesus.)

So…err…fix it?

[Wallenstein]

Another (clearly nonsense) UL re. university admissions:

A student goes for a history interview at an Oxbridge college.

The interview is in the office of a Don well-known for his aloofness. The student enters the office and sees the Don sitting behind his desk with his head buried in The Times newspaper.

After a nervious couple of minutes of silence, the Don says from behind the paper: “Surprise me”.

The student thought for a second, and took out her cigarette lighter and set light to the newspaper.

She got in.

[jjimm]

While we’re on the subject, how about the canny Oxford history student who finds out, from studying the medieval college rules, that he’s allowed a flagon of beer to be provided at the college’s expense, to be quaffed during his exams. The dons receive his request and after some consideration, write to say that they’re happy to acquiesce: provided he follows one of the other medieval rules and wears a full suit of armour.

[Max_Torque]

As long as we’re swapping apocryphal stories about students getting the better of a professor, Snopes has another good story about bird legs…

[Plynck]

@TimeWinder

The only problem with your spoilered “easy way” answer is that it’s wrong. The trains meet before the two and a half hours are up, thus stopping the bird short of your mark (the question implies that the bird stops when the trains meet.) Some variation on the “hard way” is necessary to compute that time.

Yeah, I was trying to make up a problem on the spur of the moment because I hadn’t actually been in this class and didn’t have it written down. I think that it was clear what I was getting at. Sorry to not word it correctly.

[Malacandra]

@jjimm

While we’re on the subject, how about the canny Oxford history student who finds out, from studying the medieval college rules, that he’s allowed a flagon of beer to be provided at the college’s expense, to be quaffed during his exams. The dons receive his request and after some consideration, write to say that they’re happy to acquiesce: provided he follows one of the other medieval rules and wears a full suit of armour.

Similarly the student at an Irish college who wanted to be excused mandatory church attendance on Sundays and so put down “sun worshipper” as his religion. All went well until about 4:45am on his first Sunday morning when he was rudely awoken by a banging on his door, and when he answered he saw the cheery face of a college porter. “Good morning, sir!” said the porter. “The Dean’s compliments, and he said to tell you that the sun will be up in fifteen minutes and he expects to see you in the quad to watch it rising”.

[zut]

@fetus

So…err…fix it?

So I did. It’s just good to remember that, for all the fairly decent articles in Wikipedia, there’s plenty of erroneous and unsubstantiated crap, too.

[clayton_e]

In response to r4nd0mNumb3rs’ post.

I had a History teacher at the end of H.S. who liked to do odd projects to get the students interested in the subject. They usually didn’t go so well (a debate of Communism vs. free market when none of the students even had a basic idea of the workings of Communism, write a letter to your representative in Congress when none of the students had any real interest in any of the political topics at hand), but hey, I give him points for trying.

One of his projects was, after watching videos of several theories on the Kennedy assasination he asked us to write a one page report on which one we believed and why… or to write our own.

I wrote something about JFK finding out from messengers from the future that his existance causes the destruction of the United States when policies and social attitudes set in his presidency set the stage for a horrible domino effect (had to put that phrase in because of the teacher’s beliefs on the Vietnam war) that he would never be able to understand due to its complexity. To change this he must be killed… But even that would not guarantee the reversal of what has been set into motion. A few hundred years from now the public must know that Kennedy agreed to sacrifice himself… So they asked his permission. He thought about it and decided that he could be in two places at once if he went back in time and killed himself (he didn’t want some random assasin to take his life). The time travelers agreed, thinking how noble he would appear to the public hundreds of years from now. Surely such a death would repair the damages.

I went on about how he went back in time to the 1200s and trained to be a master sniper in rural Montana where nobody would notice. He returned and killed himself. The sniper Kennedy disappeared as soon as he shot the fatal shot… Making the conspiracy complete until the public would be made aware of time travel and Kennedy’s sacrifice many many years later.
I got it back from him with a really puzzled look, a giant red X through the middle, and a huge question mark. It was pass or fail… Really the only way not to pass was to not do it.

[ivylass]

Of course, there’s the one from Star Trek: TNG, where Wesley has to calculate the matter to antimatter ratio for a ship weighing X traveling Y light years for Z amount of time…

The answer is very easy, unless you want to blow up the ship, 1:1

[ElvisL1ves]

There’s the apocryphal Harvard admissions application essay question, “Describe the personal value you admire most”. The kid who answered, simply, “Brevity” was admitted.

[GargoyleWB]

I had a psychology professor that was a Pink Floyd uber-fanatic. His exams were always half essay & half multiple choice. 1 in 20 of the multiple choice questions were blindingly obvious gimme questions with “d) Pink Floyd” as one of the answers.

A typical one of these questions would say:

“Dark Side of the Moon is the legendary musical work created by:
a) Abraham Maslow
b) BF Skinner
c) Sigmund Freud
d) Pink Floyd”

People caught on pretty quickly, and much extra credit ensued. There were students that, however, consistently got the answers incorrect.

The last week, he announced to everyone’s dismay that the final exam would be a 100% essay exam.

The question on the exam when we flipped the paper over? “Who was the greatest rock band in the world?”

I wrote “Roger Waters said that the Beatles were.”

[rogue568]

@Elendil's Heir

My dad had a college chem professor who was explaining alkalinity in urine. The prof said that while there were many tests for determining alkalinity, a taste test was most effective. He dipped a finger into a beaker of urine and then tasted it. He then told the students to do exactly what he did. Squeamishly and shuddering, they all did. Then he noted that he had dipped in his middle finger, but licked his index finger. This was intended to teach them the necessity of close observation. :dubious:

My great grandfather did this during a medical class he was teaching. Maybe your dad’s…

[Bob55]

My friend got into Notre Dame so his AP Calculus score was useless (they didn’t accept AP scores there). So on the exam I remember he wrote a bunch of random things, but one question was “write an equation for line A” and he just wrote “mc^2” because it didn’t say to write the “correct” equation. Another asked “find the volume of the oil cup” and he wrote “because of OPEC’s domination of the oil market, I refuse to answer such a question”. I’m sure the people grading it had fun.

[MaxTheVool]

@Elendil's Heir

My dad had a college chem professor who was explaining alkalinity in urine. The prof said that while there were many tests for determining alkalinity, a taste test was most effective. He dipped a finger into a beaker of urine and then tasted it. He then told the students to do exactly what he did. Squeamishly and shuddering, they all did. Then he noted that he had dipped in his middle finger, but licked his index finger. This was intended to teach them the necessity of close observation. :dubious:

I’ve heard a similar story in which a prof has a beaker in front of him and spends the entire class period lecturing about urine, properties of urine, things to learn from urine, etc. At the end of the class he picks it up and drinks the apple juice.

[Sunrazor]

@treis

It puts the Professor in a tough spot. He either has to acknowledge that there is a chair there, and thus acknowledge that the chair exists, or refuse to point out the chair rendering his question meaningless.

I like this explanation. Snopes usually does a pretty good job of proofreading, so I’m willing to accept that “Prove that the chair in front of you exists” would be the exam question, and that “What chair?” would be an “A” effort – providing it’s a philosophy or rhetoric class.

But what I truly believe is that this is an urban legend.

[Astroboy14]

@Bob55

Another asked “find the volume of the oil cup” and he wrote “because of OPEC’s domination of the oil market, I refuse to answer such a question”. I’m sure the people grading it had fun.

This reminds me of a story I think I’ve related elsewhere on this board before… true story, as it happened to me!

My first semester of university was pretty much a haze. Let’s just say that I embraced the freedom from my parent’s house with much enthusiasm, and leave it at that.

The upshot of this was that I didn’t attend many classes or do much in the way of studying (I did straighten out the next semester and managed to graduate with a decent GPA).

I had failed my calculus mid-term miserably, of course, and when it came time for the final I was in bad shape… I crammed all night before the final, trying to learn a semester’s worth of calc. in about 9 hours. You can probably imagine how well that worked.

I had figured that in order to pass the course, I needed at minimum a low A on the final. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have even gone to the final… but anyways, I went.

The first question (60% of the grade, IIRC) on the final involved a conical reservoir filled with water. The bottom of the cone was cut, and the water was draining out. We had to figure out how fast the water was draining, the rate at which the rate of water draining was changing, etc. etc.

I knew the equation I needed to start with, so I wrote it down. And I was done. I had no idea what to DO with the equation.

I browsed through the rest of the exam, and it was fatally apparent that 3 minutes into the 2 hour long final I was finished.

Not wanting to simply turn in my test and slink out, I wrote a story on the test about how when I was young my father bought me an ice cream cone (a conical reservoir), and I had bitten the bottom out causing all the ice cream to slide out into my lap. My father then smacked me upside the head and called me stupid, causing a great deal of psychological damage, and I therefore could not answer the question… and I was changing my major anyways and would never darken the door of my calc. professor again.

I got a D. :eek: