My oldest son is a senior in high school. His favorite subjects are math and physics, and he really gets along well with his physics teacher. On the first day of school she gave out a pencil sharpener to the one student (a girl) who had brought in all of her supplies (graph paper, colored pencils, etc.). My son operates on a "just in time" basis, if you need colored pencils tomorrow, buy them tonight, so he wasn't even in the running for the "supply award." But yesterday they started to work on some graphing problems and the teacher put up a graph on the board of two objects and the distance they traveled relative to time. The discussion was which object, A or B, had greater velocity. There was general discussion, and most people, including the teacher, thought the answer was A. A glance at the key, however, showed that the velocities were equal. After a little hemming and hawing, the teacher didn't have a good explanation for that result. Doug raised his hand and pointed out that one object started at a different time than the other, that must be the key, and if you drew a line from that point it would be parallel to the other (this all made a LOT more sense with the graph in front of me!).
The teacher exclaimed, "Great answer, you are exactly right!"
My son replied, "Can I get a pencil sharpener, too?"
"No."
"How about a pencil, or a piece of candy?"
"No, you only get the glory."
"Glory, that is worthless, I would rather have the pencil sharpener!"
What would the world be like if people really preferred pencil sharpeners over glory?
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