[Shaun @ Tru6]

Tabs, did you just see "What the bleep do we know" while reading "The Elegant Universe?"

here's one for you: why is more probable that strings rotate having charged lobes rather than vibrate?

Anyway, funny story about smart people and practical vs. creative thinking. I once coached rowing, best sport in all the world. We'd row all the way in November which meant that the locks holding the coaches' launches were frequently iced up, wouldn't work.

We had this kid on the team, frickin brilliant chem/physics double major graduated in 4 years with a masters (brandeis). Sweetest, smartest guy, just wish he could rowed better, but that's another story. Anyway, he's new and I ask him to unlock the boats, he comes back, says the locks are all frozen.. I follow him down, grab a bailing bucket out of boat, scoop up some the Charles' finest and plunk one of the locks in the water. he reacts like I've put it in liquid nitrogen and now it will be iced up even more. he's dancing around and everything, quite a show at 5:45AM.

I pull the lock out 5 seconds later and it unlocks llike butter. He's astounded, which is funny becuase if given an "assignement in class," I am sure he could have told me the exact caloric transfer of heat between the ever so slightly warmer water and the colder lock to melt the ice in the lock and for every degree warmer the water was, how much time would be needed, blah, blah blah in seconds.

I kid you not when he said it never occurred to him that all of heat transfer equations he knew were anything more than theoretical, or just for use in the lab.