The Stanford University

A lady in a faded gingham dress and her husband,dressed in a homespun threadbare suit, stepped off the train in Boston, and walked timidly without an appointment into the president of Harvard's outer office. The secretary could tell in a moment that such backwoods, country hicks had no business at Harvard and probably didn't even deserve to be in Cambridge.
She frowned. "We want to see the president," the man said softly. "He'll be busy all day," the secretary snapped. "We'll wait," the lady replied. For hours, the secretary ignored them, hoping that the couple would finally become discouraged and go away.
They didn't. And the secretary grew frustrated and finally decided to disturb the president, even though it was a chore she always regretted to do. "Maybe if they just see you for a few minutes, they'll leave," she told him.
And he sighed in exasperation and nodded. Someone of his importance obviously didn't have the time to spend with them, but he detested gingham dresses and homespun suits cluttering up his outer office. The president, stern-faced with dignity, strutted toward the couple. The lady told him, "We had a son that attended Harvard for one year. He loved Harvard. He was happy here. But about a year ago, he was accidentally killed. And my husband and I would like to erect a memorial to him, somewhere on campus."
The president wasn't touched, he was shocked. "Madam," he said gruffly. "We can't put up a statue for every person who attended Harvard and died. If we did, this place would look like a cemetery". "Oh, no," the lady explained quickly. "We don't want to erect a statue.
We thought we would like to give a building to Harvard." The president rolled his eyes. He glanced at the gingham dress and homespun suit, then exclaimed, "A building! Do you have any earthly idea how much a building costs? We have over seven and a half million dollars in the physical plant at Harvard." For a moment the lady was silent. The president was pleased. He could get rid of them now. And the lady turned to her husband and said quietly, "Is that all it costs to start a University? Why don't we just start our own?" Her husband nodded. The president's face wilted in confusion and bewilderment. And Mr. and Mrs. Leland Stanford walked away, traveling to Palo Alto, California where they established the University that bears their name, a memorial to a son that Harvard no longer cared about.

The way of Unorthodox thinking

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. 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 the problem it was decided to call the student in and allow
him six minutes in which to provide a verbal answer which 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 sqroot (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 person from Denmark to win the Nobel prize for Physics.


Disclaimer:
I am not copyright holder for this story. If you are, feel free to contact
me.

Forthcoming articles

1. Prisoner's Dilemma
2. Buyer's
Remorse
3. War of Attrition
4. Halo
Effect