Heavy Boots

[Gemini]

http://www.phys.ufl.edu/~det/phy2060/heavyboots.html
Wow, thats disturbing.

[Ara Pacis]

Ouch.

I suppose Elementary physics wouldn't be a good place to argue that C on #13 would also be correct if viewed from a different reference frame.

[hhEb09'1]

Bad Astronomy has discussed the "Heavy boots" story before, of course. The Bad Astronomer himself provided a link to a slightly different version back in 2002:The Heavy Boots story (http://www.milk.com/wall-o-shame/heavy_boots.html). I don't know if this is an urban legend or not.

[weirdwarp.com]

nice little story.

[danscope]

This would be a good way of screening candidates for Jay Leno's "Jaywalking".
It does indicate that some people feel that they only have to learn what they
"Have" to know, and are convinced that if they learn too much, they will get headaches or something like that.As a result, they never refine their possesion of critical thinking. And that is why you do not let them work on your brakes.
Best regards,
Dan

[kleindoofy]

Any college level person, student or faculty, who really doesn't know that the moon has gravity should be kicked down the front steps of the college administration building. With heavy boots!

Come on, that's 5th or 6th grade material. At least it was a my school.

[Fazor]

Yeah. Only an idiot would think that the boots were heavy. It was the weights they carried in those backpacks that did the trick!

:shifty:

[Tog_]

For fun, I asked three of the women I work with about this. I asked the questions the way he said he did on the test.

If you were on the Moon nd let go of a pen, what would it do? I got three answers.
1: It would hold position above the surface.
2: It would float away.
3: "Well there's no gravity on the moon, so it would fall to the ground".

When I pointed out that the astronauts were walking, and gave the multiple choice options listed on the site linked above, I got 1 reply of safety ropes and 1 "wow I don't know. I guess it could have been heavy boots".

The one person that answered it would drop because there is no gravity actually recalled seeing the demonstration of microgravity in the capsule and did answer "hold position" the first time. She thought that was done while on the moon. When I asked about the astronauts, that was when she thought about it and said answer #3 above.

All three of these women were old enough to remember seeing at least one Apollo mission live.

[Fazor]

It would fall to the ground because there's no gravity? Well, at least there's a prime example of why you show your work in math class; it's entirely possible to have the right answer and be totally wrong.

[Argos]

Apollo 15 hammer and feather gravity demonstration (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6926891572259784994) on Google video.

[mugaliens]

Some people (most people?) have little clue as to the world around them.

[hhEb09'1]

Including, yours truly.

I am continually amazed at the misconceptions that I have been carrying around for eighty years. No, I'm not going to tell you what they were.

[HenrikOlsen]

Apollo 15 hammer and feather gravity demonstration (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6926891572259784994) on Google video.
I just flashed on this wonderful scene (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maI53H4Zbrs) from the rather strange but IMNSHO generally wonderful movie Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, where Gary Oldman's character (who keeps noticing behavior in objects that points to scientific principles he's unfortunately too simple to make something of while Tim Roth's character who has the brains to have made sense of them is oblivious) notices that a bowling pin and a shuttlecork drops at the same speed, concludes that all objects fall at the same speed, and immediately tries to demonstrate his newfound insight to Tim by dropping a ball and a feather.

Incidentally, I'm not using character names since, despite what IMBD claims, in the movie they have no idea which of them is Rosencrantz and which is Guildenstern and they never find out.