[AMPS] Another arc question

[Geurts, Gerard]

A true story, draw your own conclusions. For some reason I remembered
this when I came into the office this morning and had a look through the
e-mails that came in over the weekend:

About twelve years ago, when I was in college, they used to organise
(organize for those who have strange ideas about English) extra
curriculum activities, normally during lunch breaks. This was meant to
broaden our horizon and expose us to different views on technology.

One day they invited a weirdo who claimed he had invented perpetual
motion. He even offered a reward for those who could proof his theory
was wrong. In explaining his machine (sorry, this was only a prototype
that didn't run yet) he put a balance of forces on the blackboard that
was supposed to proof his theory. It was instantly clear to everybody
present that he put one of the forces involved on the wrong side of the
equation, thus 'inventing' perpetual motion. The reward was up for
grabs.

His opponent during the resulting discussion was one of the professors
in mechanical engineering, who was willing to take up the challenge to
proof him wrong and get the reward. He did another calculation on the
blackboard showing what went wrong where. Actually, he did this
calculation about 5 times. The inventor however simply maintained that
his equations were correct, and his theory was not proven wrong. Ergo,
no reward. I really admired that professor who was willing to go through
the same calculations five times to educate his opponent, but if your
are faced with someone that stubborn you won't get anywhere.

This whole session made for a very interesting lunch break, but didn't
do much to expand our knowledge. Unfortunately, the only person who
could have learned something was not willing to listen.

Cheers

Gerard, MoAIU



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