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Flag Pole

A group of managers were given the assignment to measure the height of a flagpole. So they go out to the flagpole with ladders and tape measures, and they're falling off the ladders, dropping the tape measures - the whole thing is just a mess.

An employee comes along and sees what they're trying to do, walks over, pulls the flagpole out of the ground, lays it flat, measures it from end to end, gives the measurement to one of the managers and walks away.

After the employee has gone, one manager turns to another and laughs. 'Isn't that just like an employee. We're looking for the height and he gives us the length.'

<font color=plum>LOLOLOLOL!!!! Too true, <font color=white>Arvon</font>. [img]graemlins/biglaugh.gif[/img] </font>

*feeling stupid there* :D

Well in the managers' defence, the worker did do it wrong, he measured the full length of the flagpole, including the piece that was in the ground...

Heh! I wonder who is stupid. The managers or the employee ?

Both. Everyone knows you measure the shadow of something with a known height, then measure the shadow of the flag pole, and calculate from there [img]smile.gif[/img]

Quote:

Originally posted by StigTC:
Well in the managers' defence, the worker did do it wrong, he measured the full length of the flagpole, including the piece that was in the ground...

Well if you want to get picky he shouldn't have helped at all..

Now if the managers need the exact height above ground they can take into account the ammount of pole that is below ground level, either by looking at the pole, or more acuratly by meaureing the hole it fits into..

Unless it's in a slot base, which sit's above ground and so they'd need to simple add in the height of the base..

Reminded me of another purportedly true story...

Quote:

Physics Exam
The following concerns a question in a physics degree exam at the University of Copenhagen:

"Describe how to determine the height of a skyscraper with a barometer."

One student replied:

"You tie a long piece of string to the neck of the barometer, then lower the barometer from the roof of the skyscraper to the ground. The length of the string plus the length of the barometer will equal the height of the building."

This highly original answer so incensed the examiner that the student was failed immediately. He appealed on the grounds that his answer was indisputably correct, and the university appointed an independent arbiter to decide the case. The arbiter judged that the answer was indeed correct, but did not display any noticeable knowledge of physics. To resolve the problem it was decided to call the student in and allow him six minutes in which to provide a verbal answer which showed at least a minimal familiarity with the basic principles of physics. For five minutes the student sat in silence, forehead creased in thought. The arbiter reminded him that time was running out, to which the student replied that he had several extremely relevant answers, but couldn't make up his mind which to use. On being advised to hurry up the student replied as follows:

"Firstly, you could take the barometer up to the roof of the skyscraper, drop it over the edge, and measure the time it takes to reach the ground. The height of the building can then be worked out from the formula H = 0.5g x t squared. But bad luck on the barometer.

"Or if the sun is shining you could measure the height of the barometer, then set it on end and measure the length of its shadow. Then you measure the length of the skyscraper's shadow, and thereafter it is a simple matter of proportional arithmetic to work uut the height of the skyscraper.

"But if you wanted to be highly scientific about it, you could tie a short piece of string to the barometer and swing it like a pendulum, first at ground level and then on the roof of the skyscraper. The height is worked out by the difference in the gravitational restoring force T = 2 pi sqrroot (l/g).

"Or if the skyscraper has an outside emergency staircase, it would be easier to walk up it and mark off the height of the skyscraper in barometer lengths, then add them up.

"If you merely wanted to be boring and orthodox about it, of course, you could use the barometer to measure the air pressure on the roof of the skyscraper and on the ground, and convert the difference in millibars into feet to give the height of the building.

But since we are constantly being exhorted to exercise independence of mind and apply scientific methods, undoubtedly the best way would be to knock on the janitor's door and say to him 'If you would like a nice new barometer, I will give you this one if you tell me the height of this skyscraper'."

The student was Nils Bohr, the only Dane to win the Nobel prize for Physics.

Don't know if it's true or not, but it makes good reading :D Some folks can't handle original thinking... ;)

BTW, that copy of the story was lifted from TheHumorArchives.com.

you could use simple trig, if you measure out say 10m from the bast then take a pertractor or some other angle measuring device to measure the height then use tan angle = pole/10m [img]tongue.gif[/img]

it would be very inaccurate to mesure an imaginary line with a pertractor
therefor: the awnswer would be rubbish