The physics student went out, purchased some stopwatches, a number of ball
bearings, a calculator, and some friends. He had them all time the drop of ball
bearings from the roof, and he then figured out the height from the time it took
for the bearings to accelerate from rest until they impacted with the sidewalk.
The math student waited until the sun was going down, then she took out her
protractor, plumb line, measuring tape, and scratch pad, measured the length of
the shadow, found the angle the buildings roof made from the ground, and used
trigonometry to figure out the height of the building.
Of course, with all that was involved in getting this experiment done, they
were up plenty late studying for other courses' exams. These two students bumped
into the engineering student the next day, which looked quite refreshed. When
asked what he did to find the height of the building he replied:
"Well, I walked up to the bell hop, gave him 10 bucks, asked him how tall the
hotel was, and went inside for happy hour!"
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