The problems are all fairly difficult (remember the pizza box from a short time ago), but "do-able". Until tonight. He put a problem up on the board, then after 15 minutes of listening to us banter back and forth between ourselves about how the heck to do it, he got up and proceeded to show us.
He couldn't figure out how to do it.
He gave us the problem, and subsequently could not do it himself. Due to this he gave us all full credit for it since he blundered.
The problem?
If a satellite weighs 500 pounds at an unknown distance from the earth (call this X), and the luminescence from a laser installed on it is at 100% strength when that light reaches sea level on the earth, if the satellite is moved out to where it's weight is 250 pounds, what percentage decrease in the luminescence would there be?
Given that Weight = K/D^2 and Intensity = K\D^2, figure this out. Oh, don't forget that when figuring weight, you are figuring it from the core of the earth, not from the surface at sea level (he was generous and gave us the figure of 4000 to use for this.)
No one in the class got it right, but we all felt better when he could not do it either.
Supposedly the answer is supposed to be 41% (not the Douglass Adams answer of 42), but he could not get there from here.
We also had our first quiz for this class tonight. He gave us 25 questions, we have to answer 20 of them and any above that are extra credit. It is a take home quiz, and he doesn't care if we work together on it. There will be a bunch of us meeting on Saturday morning to work on it together.
I suspect I will need to have a good caffeine source for it!