FILE No.10Unsolved
Sugihara is a fourth-year university student. He already has a job lined up, but he cannot graduate unless he passes this physics exam. It is his third try.
Looking at the exam, Sugihara felt relieved. It was what he had studied yesterday. Question 3 asks for the distance a cart travels when pushed with a constant force. The answer box says "numbers only."
After finishing the calculation, Sugihara stopped. He had an answer, but 80, 0.8 and 800 all seemed right. (I want to ask, but that professor is strict...)
Then Tono, the star student behind him, raised her hand and quietly asked the professor a question. (That must be what I wanted to ask!)
All Sugihara could hear was the professor’s reply: "Whether you can earn that depends on how you do on this exam."
What did Tono ask?
If you get stuck, open the hints one at a time, in order.
80, 0.8 and 800 are different ways of writing the same distance. What changes the number?
Does the professor’s reply sound as if it answers Tono’s question? What is something you “earn”?
What do you “earn” in university life? It also has to do with graduating.
What did Tono ask?
Choose the answer closest to the truth.
What the unit is
The answer is “what the unit is.”
Tono asked which unit to attach to the answer to Question 3. 80 cm, 0.8 m and 800 mm are the same distance, but when the answer box says “numbers only,” you must decide which unit to write it in. The professor, however, took “units” to mean course credits, the units needed to graduate, and replied, "Whether you can earn that depends on how you do on this exam." The same word had a different meaning for each of them.
Reading from Sugihara’s view, your attention goes to the professor’s reply rather than to how to write the number. The idea that one word has two meanings does not come easily.
The cases on this site are fictional puzzles created for entertainment. Any resemblance to real people, organizations or events is coincidental.
© Unsolved Files
