Reflections on education....

Here is a funny little story from my graduate level physics class. We should be the smart kids, right? Guess again!


So we show up to class one day and there is a mirror and some other stuff on the table in the front of the room. It is the first day in a new chapter, so it is not surprising to see demos on the table. Our professor starts out by asking us to discuss amongst ourselves what effect the mirror has on a coil placed in front of it. Well, there are only a dozen of us, so we started a discussion about it. The end goal is to describe whether or not it changes what is called the "handedness" of the coil - essentially whether it is clockwise or counterclockwise. Being the smart kids that we are, we begin to discuss the mathematics involved in creating the image of the coil. First somebody suggests that it is a rotation. Then somebody suggests it is a translation through the plane of the mirror. Another person suggests maybe it is a parity. None of those seem quite right, so we begin to discuss combinations of those, like a rotation AND a translation. As we are brainstorming the possibilities, another guy, who had so far been silent, pipes up and says, "I think it might just be a reflection." At this point we all look at each other and have a mutual moment of awe at our stupidity. We, a room full of gradaute physics students, had just taken 10 minutes to arrive at the conclusion that a mirror creates a reflection!!! That, my friends, is what education does to your brain!! Moral of the story....don't get educated....