http://maruzar.blogspot.com/2011/12/measure-height-from-distant-with.html

You can draw scale map by using the same triangles method, the produced map is good enough to check landscape distance, area, and landscape planning, etc.. And its simple enough to play treasure hunt game.

http://maruzar.blogspot.com/2011/12/drawing-simple-scale-map-by-triangle.html

Students who can’t tolerate such environments are punished by sending them to schools that are even worse. The lucky ones are discovered by some iconoclast who moves them to an environment that rewards all the behaviors described above. But there are so few who are so lucky.

I was not failed for being insolent, I was not failed for being wrong.

I was failed on the grounds that the teacher didn’t believe that most of the words I had used existed.

The teacher was a graduate of Harvard and teaching at the International School Of Geneva.
Just goes to show.

1. Construct a line AB between points a and b.
2. Construct a line perpendicular to AB, bisecting AB at point c, such that AC = BC
3. If point x falls on the new line, it is equidistant from a and b (as are all points on this new line) by side-angle-side (AC = BC, ACX = BCX, and CX = CX, therefore AX = BX)

It was an introductory question to get some idea how much calculus we knew prior to taking the course. I, of course, knew nothing of calculus, and what little of geometry I remembered was from 7 years prior.

My teacher, though, was very accepting. I have to thank her for that.

Well, in math, that is as simple as reading a few papers. In an experimental science it’s different. However, few undergrads doing “research” for profs are doing more than being cheap hands. They don’t really have the background to
participate in current physics research at any higher level.

It is different in graduate school–it’s sort of difficult to do high energy physics on the experimental level without access to a high end accelerator etc.

I agree that at the highest level, it could be helpful to ask professors questions.
I didn’t because I enjoyed working the stuff out on my own and I was independent–perhaps to a fault.

And, I was going to post the same things you did in response to Robert, but didn’t want to start a flame war.

As to nanotech, solar energy etc., these areas require lots of old physics–one
reason I chose them. Such things as the domination by viscous forces at a certain scale, thermodynamics etc. Similarly for the nuclear physics experiments that I mentioned. Building Geiger Detectors teaches principles of electron flow, and building cloud chambers teaches principles of thermodynamics.

My high school physics course ( 1960′s ) New York City, included derivations of
PV=nRT from the assumption of molecular chaos, a derivation of the Bohr atom, special relativity, derivation of Kepler’s laws etc. Today, that would
( sadly) be considered remarkable–but back then it was standard.

I found it boring, as I had read much more physics on my own, but it was
a very good background for most students.