I was familiar with the various 999 clubs and societies, and Mensa (and was once a member of Mensa - too many assholes), but not Prometheus. Anyone have any experience with them?
Apparently I qualify having recieved over 149 on the SBIV, though my old SAT score was only 1540 and they want 1560 (new would be 1600. They changed the norming and scaling in '95). Actually I qualify in several ways from several of the tests. Of course finding the records of those... oy I probably don't want to bother.
But if the organization is useful and interesting, maybe...
Oh and I jsut took the "International High I.Q. society - ultimate I.Q. test" and only got 136; but again, it's one of the worst formatted tests I've ever seen. Only 35 questions, more than half of them were on geometric pattern recognition (worse, dependingt on pseudo-random color patterns as well), and several of them had what I would at best call highly ambiguous answers i.e. none of the options availabe were entirely correct; or multiple options were.
One of the things I really hate is when they ask a question that if framed as pure SIMPLE physics would have a definite answer, but if taken in the real world example that they use to frame the question the correct answer in pure COMPLEX physics would be incorrect.
Classic example...
Imagine a monkey, suspended by a frictionless pully, with a frictionless rope, and no rolling resistance; counterbalanced exactly by a weight on the other side. What will happen if the monkey starts to climb:
1. The weight will rise and the money will not move
2. The weight will rise and the monkey will fall
3. The weight will fall and the monkey will rise
4. The weight will not move and the monkey will climb
5. nothing will move
6. The weight and the monkey will both move higher
Okay so the SIMPLE physics answer is 4, the monkey will climb. Assuming the system maintains equilibrium of mass, then it will remain in balance, whether the monkey is climbing or not.
The only problem is, that assumes an inertialess system with no swing in the rope.
If the monkey is EXACTLY counterbalanced by the weight, then the energy the monkey expends in overcoming it's inerta, the energy of acceleration, and the swing in the rope are going to cause the weight to bob a bit; and over the length of the climb, the weight is going to very slightly change position.
How about this one,
You have two containers one with 1 liter of water, the other with 1 liter of milk. Take one teason of milk and evenly mix it into the water to make a water/milk mixture. Now take one teaspoon of the water/milk mixture and mix it into the milk to form a milk/water mixture.
There is now:
More milk in the milk water mixture
More water in the water milk mixture
More milk in the water milk mixture
More water in the milk water mixture
The same amount of water and milk in both mixtures
So anyone see the immediate and obviou problem with this question?
MILK IS MOSTLY WATER ALREADY.
Or is that just overthinking the problem?
Posted by cbyrne at December 10, 2005 09:23 AM | TrackBack