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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/wavking on 2024-10-14 08:13:54+00:00.

Inspired by a recent post. This was actually a lesson taught to our class by a physics teacher. He describes a poorly worded test question that said “how can you use a barometer to find the hight of a building?” Now obviously the tester wanted to know how to use barometric pressure to calculate elevation. But that’s not what they asked. So one clever student gave three different answers:

1. Tie a string to the barometer and lower it to the ground . Measure the length of the string. That’s by the hight of the building.
2. Drop the barometer from the top of the building and time how long it takes to hit the ground. Use the formula for acceleration due to gravity to determine the height.
3. Find the building superintendent and tell him you’ll give him this nice barometer if he’ll tell you the hight of the building.

I don’t remember how the student fared in the question, but the lesson was burned into my memory. As another teacher had a slogan on a number sticker, “a well asked question is a problem half solved”