Let me say upfront that I’m glad I wasn’t my teacher in school.
(Impossible, I know. Still, I’m glad). School for me was rather monotonous so,
I always tried to make it more interesting. For some reason, my humor and extra
effort weren’t always appreciated.
There are many instances that I could use to illustrate my point; the
following is one of my favorites.
Grade school. A Science test. The state of matter. One section of the
test listed ten or twelve substances, things like; gasoline, plastic, granite,
helium, milk, etc. In the blank beside each one, I was supposed to write either
liquid, solid, or gas. That seemed far too mundane to me, so instead I printed
in very neat letters, “Depends on the temperature.” Imagine my “surprise” when
the test was returned with every one of them marked wrong!
If this had been a few years later, I would have gotten away with it.
My high school teacher had a sense of humor - or appreciated mine.
Unfortunately, my fourth grade teacher did not. As far as he was concerned, my
answers were incorrect.
Of course, I argued. After all, the test hadn’t specified what
temperature I was supposed to use. If cold enough everything can be a solid -
even if you have to go all the way to absolute zero (the theoretical
temperature at which no heat is present in any particle, approximately –460°F in case anyone is
wondering). And obviously,
thanks to Newton’s Third Law of Thermodynamics, the equal and opposite must be
true; if hot enough, everything can be a gas.
After several more minutes of discussion, which involved the whole
class, the teacher gave up. Although he would not concede that I was right, he
agreed to not mark my answers wrong. Same thing to me. However, he did go on
and on about how in the future I should recognize when something is implied and
form my answers accordingly.
Yeah, sure. I never did seem to learn that. To this day, when someone
asks how long it takes to drive from one town to another - a question I get a
lot, being a truck driver - I say, “Depends on how fast you drive.”
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