A Real Life Story

A student was asked a question by his physics professor that "how to determine the height of a skyscraper with a barometer" the student replied immediately stating that, " 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". The student was asked to move out of the class room stating that his answer was wrong and was failed in the compre .the student appealed to the university that his answer was correct .The university in turn appointed a arbiter a resolve the situation, the arbiter stated that the student will be given a second chance of 5minutes to re answer this question i front of the arbiter.The student appeared in the hall and was silent for almost the whole 5 minutes the arbiter then urged for an answer .The student replied telling that he had several extremely relevant answers, but couldn't make up his mind which to use. The arbiter then asked the student to tell one by one but to hurry up he started to express his thoughts and his ideas on it.

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.

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 sqroot (l / g)

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 out the height of the skyscraper

The whole university hall was silenced by these answers of the student .The student went on to claim the Nobel prize for physics the only person to get it from his country.