It’s funny not just because it’s my alma mater… It gives some great parenting ideas, to0!

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One year at UCLA two students were taking Chemistry and were doing pretty well on all of the quizzes, midterms and labs, etc., such that going into the final they had a solid “A”. These two friends were so confident going into the final that the weekend before finals week (even though the Chem final was on Monday), they decided to go up to UC Santa Barbara and party with some friends there. So they did this and had a great time. However, with their hangovers and everything, they overslept all day Sunday and didn’t make it back to LA until early Monday morning.

Rather than take the final then, what they did was to find Professor Honk after the final and explain to him why they had missed it. They told him that they went up to UC Santa Barbara for the weekend, and had planned to come back in time to study, but that they had a flat tire on the way back and didn’t have a spare and couldn’t get help for a long time and so were late getting back to campus. Honk thought this over and then agreed that they could make up the final on the following day. The two guys were elated and relieved.

So, they studied that night and went in the next day at the time that Honk had told them. He placed them in separate rooms and handed each of them a test booklet and told them to begin. They looked at the first problem, which was something simple about molarity and solutions and was worth 5 points. “Cool,” they thought, “this is going to be easy.” They did that problem and then turned the page. They were unprepared, however, for what they saw on the next page. It said:

(95 points) Which tire?