Steven Krivit wrote:
I wonder what Trudeau has in mind?
Just looks like he's trying to make the girl -- Doonesbury's daughter,
right? I haven't followed this in umpteen years -- look like a techno
type, and provide an amusing way of judging technical schools, I'd say.
I wouldn't look any deeper than that.
The current-source/voltage-source puzzle is totally standard among
double-E's, and comes up from time to time as a riddle. Trudeau stated
it wrong, of course (or rather, stated it incompletely) and gave the
wrong reason for the difference, in that _both_ boxes must contain a
resistor. The difference is that the resistor in the current-source box
is carrying a constant 1 amp, while the resistor in the voltage source
is carrying no current.
Trudeau himself is apparently no techno-whizz, though he knows some
buzzwords and clearly knows people who know something about science,
technology, and engineering. I still remember when Mike was buying a
computer, a long long time ago, and he was asked how many "floppsies" he
wanted in it (one or two). Since these strips are hand-lettered (or
rather, these strips _were_ hand-lettered back then) I don't think it
was a typo -- just a mistake in the name by a non-techie: everybody
else calls 'em "floppies".
Anyhow the "correct" form of the riddle goes more like this:
There are two black boxes, each with two terminals on it. One contains
an ideal 1 amp current source in parallel with a 1 ohm resistor; the
other contains an ideal 1 volt voltage source in series with a 1 ohm
resistor. How do you tell which is which?
