Cars on Strings

Today, I took a test in my materials science class. I'm fairly certain the test was put together by a monkey. A retarded monkey. With a bad cocaine addiction.

Allow my to illustrate. (Don't worry, I'll be using non-engineer speak)

Problem 1: You are asked to pick which material (copper, stainless steel or aluminum) you should use to build a 1/4 inch thick rod that will hold ten thousands pounds.

Stop and think about that for a second. A 1/4 inch thick rod is about half the width of your pinky. Ten thousand pounds is about the weight of three cars. It doesn't matter which of the three materials you use, a 1/4 inch shaft won't hold 10000 pounds. Common sense and the actual calculations (which I did) back it up.

Problem 2: Why do we use a certain type of acid to each steel instead of using water?

You don't have to know much about the problem to see what's wrong. You just have to know what that when you turn on your faucet, the only way you're going to get burned is if the water is really hot. Because water is not an acid. It doesn't burn things. That's why we don't (and can't) use it to etch steel. That's why we use acid. It's like asking you use gas to fuel your car instead of sand. Because gas works, and sand... doesn't.

There were a number of other frustrating things about the test, but they would involve getting technical, so I won't go there. The point is, professors should not write tests that are filled nonsensical questions.

*shakes head*