Snappy answers to difficult questions

[Troberg]

I know a guy who answered a question "What is TIN?" (it some kind of acronym in his field of work). His mind temporarily drew a blank and he answered: "Half the name of a French comic book character.".

The teacher who graded it wrote: "Wrong. It's a Belgian comic book character. 0 points.".

[Illuminatus]

Perhaps the real answer to the Engineering question is that the ship is releasing more heat than it was taking in, meaning that it would be a net loss of energy?

Anyway, the "Find X" was mu favorite. When I was in High School, I had to write a long History/English paper where I had to "interview" a historical author. On page 14, I wrote (paraphrasing from memory):
Tolkien: <mumble mumble>
Me: I'm sorry, I don't hear that.
Tolkien: It doesn't matter, the teacher never reads this far anyway.


Apparently she does.

[Amigone201]

How do you do the first one?

[Eddylizard]

Originally Posted by Amigone201

How do you do the first one?

Cos 34 = adjacent/hypotenuse

Cos 34 = 22/x

x*Cos 34 = 22

22/Cos 34 = x

22/0.829 = x = 26.537

x = 26.537

Then suck my dick fag.

[Tenko]

This is just too funny! Hilarious!

Weird! The writing on the first one looks like one of my teachers, and the third and fourth ones look like answers I'd put down. The first and second ones are the only ones that are wrong IMO. The other ones are just examples of divergent thinking.

[Izzy Quigley]

Originally Posted by Amigone201

How do you do the first one?

You find the cosine of 34 degrees with a calculator (I forget if there's a simple way to do it manually). Cosine is adjacent over hypotenuse, so cosine 34 would be 22/x. Multiply both sides by x, then divide both sides by whatever you got for cosine 34. Thus, if I'm remembering how to do this right, x = 22/cos 34, or -25.93.

As for the funny answers, I like the second one. I remember that sense of gradually sinking into despair from high school math classes.

ETA: Spanked by EddyLizard while being pedantic.

ETA again: And I apparently got it wrong. :o

[Amigone201]

Originally Posted by Eddylizard

Cos 34 = adjacent/hypotenuse

Cos 34 = 22/x

x*Cos 34 = 22

22/Cos 34 = x

22/0.829 = 26.53

x = 26.53.

Then suck my dick.

Cosine, yes! I felt dumb, I was staring at it and trying to figure out how to use the Pythagorean Theorem.

Okay, well, drop trou...

[Eddylizard]

Originally Posted by Amigone201

Cosine, yes! I felt dumb, I was staring at it and trying to figure out how to use the Pythagorean Theorem.

Okay, well, drop trou...

To use pythagorean theorem we have to establish the length of the unmarked side (which I'll call O.)

Tan 34 = O/22

Tan 34*22 = O

0.674*22 = O = 14.839

14.839^2 + 22^2 = 220.201+484 = x ^2= 704.201

Sqrt 704.201 = x = 26.537

It can be done.

Originally Posted by Amigone201

How do you do the first one?

The first one shows a right triangle (note the little square on the upper corner), with one of the angles labeled 34 degrees and the adjacent side of length 22. The cosine of an angle is defined as the adjacent side over the hypotenuse (longest side, across from the right angle). Therefore,

cosine 34 degrees = 22/x where x is the length of the hypotenuse

Alternatively, the other non-labeled angle is 56 degrees (because all three angles have to add up to 180), so

sine 56 degrees = 22/x

Presumably, the test taker would have access to a sine or cosine table and could find the value of either sine 56 degrees or cosine 34 degrees. Then it becomes division: x=22/sine(56 degrees)=22/cosine(34 degrees).

If no tables are available, one can estimate:
sine(45) = cosine(45) ~= 0.707
sine(60) = cosine(30) ~= 0.866
56 degrees is much closer to 60 than to 45, so I would pick 0.82 or thereabouts.
If I were really lazy, I would pick 0.818181..., which is 9/11. The answer then becomes 22/(9/11) or 22*11/9 = 232/9. This is almost 26, and I rounded down a bit earlier, so I would round up to 26.

Checking my work with my calculator, I find the actual answer is 26.5. My estimate was off by about 2%.

Blue Phantom

ETA Spanked by a bunch of folks. Ouch!

[Tisiphone]

I once had a maths quiz. The last question began "Which mathmatician discovered..." and I couldn't think of the names of any mathematicians (with hindsight, I probably knew at least one. But I read the question wrong anyway). I answered 'Jean E Uss'.

Originally Posted by Eddylizard

The "Find x" was my favourite, followed closely by the ship engineer (what is the answer anyway?)

"X" was a good answer, but the real answer is pretty simple (any 10th grader could have doen it) Perhaps the test was given to someone not yet at that level (i.e., 8th grade). I did laugh at it,

Illuminatus got the The Ship Engineer pretty close. The ship would have to add energy to get the water (initially 10') warmer (ending at 20'). It violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics

Heat can never pass spontaneously from a colder to a hotter body. As a result of this fact, natural processes that involve energy transfer must have one direction, and all natural processes are irreversible. This law also predicts that the entropy of an isolated system always increases with time. Entropy is the measure of the disorder or randomness of energy and matter in a system

See the following link: Thermodynamics

Basically heat goes from a Hot object into a Cold object, not the other way around.

[Seaboe Muffinchucker]

Originally Posted by Troberg

I know a guy who answered a question "What is TIN?" (it some kind of acronym in his field of work). His mind temporarily drew a blank and he answered: "Half the name of a French comic book character.".

The teacher who graded it wrote: "Wrong. It's a Belgian comic book character. 0 points.".

My brother, who is an electrical engineer, once answered the question "what does FM stand for" by saying "furry mouse."

Seaboe

[Penny]

Originally Posted by Deepfrydegg

Basically heat goes from a Hot object into a Cold object, not the other way around.

Heat won't pass from a cooler to a hotter
You can try it if you like, but you'd far better notter

[Eddylizard]

Originally Posted by Deepfrydegg

"X" was a good answer, but the real answer is pretty simple (any 10th grader could have doen it) Perhaps the test was given to someone not yet at that level (i.e., 8th grade). I did laugh at it,

Illuminatus got the The Ship Engineer pretty close. The ship would have to add energy to get the water (initially 10') warmer (ending at 20'). It violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics
See the following link: Thermodynamics

Basically heat goes from a Hot object into a Cold object, not the other way around.

That was my first thought. But heat and temperature aren't the same thing. If I transfer the heat from a volume x of a fluid (completely and efficiantly, which is not possible) into volume x/2 of the same but cooler fluid would the temperature of that second fluid become double that of the first?

So if the engineer proposed to extract seawater at 10 deg C, utilise some of the heat energy to do whatever on his ship, and discharge the rest into a much smaller volume of (cooler) air, then is it not possible the air could have twice the temperature of the original fluid?

Not disputing, just asking.

After going through practically all of my academic life with an undiagnosed math/spacial learning disability, I should have written some of those answers on some of my tests, 'course at the time I was more interested in just putting something on the paper in attempt at getting at least some credit for trying.

When I was going through statistics (which I ended up failing the 3 times I attempted the class before being tested for a learning disability) I'm pretty sure that I did write a few wise-ass answers just to fill the paper and make it appear that I had taken the time to try and answer the questions.

By the way, all of that cosine crap made my brain hurt just by glancing at it.

[ds_40]

Originally Posted by lazerus the duck

I'd like to know if the teacher had any definate proof this wasn't the answer?

It's more important for the engineer to have proof, so he could sue his boss

Anyway, it says he thought he had a good idea, so that implies something was wrong with his idea...then again some people think affairs are good ideas.

On a slight tangent involving silly answers to test questions...

I once did not sleep well the night before a test (nothing to do with nervousness; I'm just an insomniac). While I was doing the essay portion, I apparently dozed off slightly, and came to a few moments later to find that I had written about a paragraph's worth of material about wolves, which had absolutely nothing to do with the subject of the test.

hehehee. the one abotu finding X made me laugh so much, i wish i had read this about 10 years ago so i could have used this in school.

[DarkDan]

This is from the book Found which is an awesome book. I never get tired of it! Anyway, click for a bigger view.




The answer to number fourteen cracks me up.

[Wicked Tinkerbell]

Oh so many years ago (when I was only Mischievous Tinkerbell), I was taking the first test for my basic astronomy course at a community college. One of the questions* was about novas.

I answered the question with great detail, then added: "Or it is a Chevy car."

The professor thought that it was funny. He used it as a possible answer on the final exam.


[*I added jokes where I could on these tests. Being the geek that I am, I knew that I was going to get an A in the class. Using puns and jokes was the challenge. This is the only example that I can remember. I would post the a picture as proof, but the test is fossilizing in a landfill in San Diego.]