[time-nuts] Danish Question

[John Day]

At 03:10 PM 10/31/2007, you wrote:
>); SAEximRunCond expanded to false
>Errors-To: time-nuts-bounces+johnday=wordsnimages.com at febo.com RETRY
>
>In message 
><!&!AAAAAAAAAAAYAAAAAAAAAOYAZyOzV8ERq+LmT45ypI7CgAAAEAAAAMh4axYd2AtA
>t4NbktzPwJcBAAAAAA==@timing-consultants.com>, "Rob Kimberley" writes:
>
> >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."
> >
> >[urban legend]
> >
> >The student was Nils Bohr, the first Dane to win the Nobel prize for
> >Physics.
>
>No, it most certainly was not Niels Bohr, and I seriously doubt it
>was anybody, as this particular urban legend was already old when
>I studied physics...

You beat me to it Poul-Henning, the legend is first documented in 
1958, but did not involve Bohr. I heard it in 1971 in the UK and gain 
in 1973 in the US - by then it is attributed to Bohr.

Some sources say that Rutherford was the arbiter. Why would 
Rutherford have become involved? But it is true that around 1911 Bohr 
did work in Rutherfords laboratory.

I later again heard the same legend in California in 1976, but about 
some other eminently undistinguished candidate, not Bohr.

John



>Poul-Henning
>
>--
>Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
>phk at FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
>FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe
>Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.
>
>_______________________________________________
>time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at febo.com
>To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
>and follow the instructions there.