It took several years, but eventually someone posted a sensible comment below the article - "ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer."<p>The lecturer, a person in a position of trust, starts with a query coming from a place of deception. The students trusted the teacher to be asking them something relevant and they gave it their best shot. Sure, it's great to always keep a sharp mind and not make assumptions, but it's also a waste of time to question each and every pre-supposition, which is what's required to get to the correct answer of "because you rigged it."
Context had a lot to do with this. Science students expect to be presented with a counterintuitive occurrence coupled with an enlightened explanation from the teacher.<p>Imagine a more natural, everyday scenario. A student gets into a friend's car and notices that the seats on the sunny side of the car are cool and the seats on the shady side of the car are warm. They would easily conclude that the car had not been parked there long. They may even consider that the car had recently been parked on the other side of the street.
The story and some of the comments here reminded me of an old joke.<p>What is it: green, whistling, hanging on a wall? The answer is <i>a herring</i>. Wait, how? Why is it green? <i>I painted it green.</i> Why is it hanging on the wall? <i>I put it there.</i> But why is it whistling? <i>So it would not be too easy to guess!</i>
I dislike the tone of both this and "Where Does A Tree Get It's Mass" (<a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1480118" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1480118</a>). They both have a rather smug, superior air about them that I find really irritating.<p>OK we get it, kids often struggle a bit in science classes and occasionally fumble for answers. This is nothing new as I imagine we have all done it at various points, and chiding students in blog entries doesn't help anyone.