Jeff Schwab wrote: > So what's the "double mistake?" My understanding was (1) the misuse > (ok, vernacular use) of the term "free fall," and (2) the association of > weight with free-fall velocity ("If I tie an elephant's tail to a > mouse's, and drop them both into free fall, will the mouse slow the > elephant down?")
I presume his point was that physicists have a specialized meaning of "free fall" and, in that context, the answer is wrong. My point was, and still is, that if this question without further context is posed to a generally educated laymen, the supposedly wrong answer that was given is actually _correct_. After all, surely the technical physics meaning of "free fall" came _after_ a more common term was in use, just as with other terms like "force" or "energy" that have technical meanings in physics, but more abstract or general meanings in the general parlance. "Free fall" means something specialized to physicists, but it means something more general to non-physicists. A lot of these kind of "gotcha" questions intended to trick even reasonable people into demonstrating technical ignorance have precisely the same problem: The desired technical context is not made clear and so that the supposedly-wrong answer is not only unsurprising, but often arguably correct. This kind of stuff is little more than a semantic terminology game, rather than revealing any deeper concepts. -- Erik Max Francis && [EMAIL PROTECTED] && http://www.alcyone.com/max/ San Jose, CA, USA && 37 18 N 121 57 W && AIM, Y!M erikmaxfrancis Tell me the truth / I'll take it like a man -- Chante Moore -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list