"There are many ways of getting the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer. For example, you could take the barometer out on a sunny day and measure the height of the barometer, the length of its shadow, and the length of the shadow of the building, and by the use of simple proportion, determine the height of the building."

 "Fine," I said, "and others?"

 "Yes," said the student. "There is a very basic measurement method you will like. In this method, you take the barometer and begin to walk up the stairs. As you climb the stairs, you mark off the length of the barometer along the wall. You then count the number of marks, and this will give you the height of the building in barometer units. "A very direct method."

 "Of course, if you want a more sophisticated method, you can tie the barometer to the end of a string, swing it as a pendulum, and determine the value of g at the street level and at the top of the building. From the difference between the two values of g, the height of the building, in principle, can be calculated."

"Finally," he concluded, "there are many other ways of solving the problem. Probably the best," he said, "is to take the barometer to the basement and knock on the superintendent's door. When the superintendent answers, you speak to him as follows: 'Mr. Superinten- dent, here is a fine barometer. If you will tell me the height of the building, I will give you this barometer."

 At this point, I asked the student if he really did not know the conventional answer to this question. He admitted that he did, but said that he was fed up with high school and college instructors trying to teach him how to think, to use the "scientific method," and to explore the deep inner logic of the subject in a pedantic way, as is often done in the new mathematics, rather than teaching him the structure of the subject. With this in mind, he decided to revive scholasti- cism as an academic lark to challenge the Sputnik-panicked classrooms of America.

Freelance Writer

Youth Corner

(continue from vol.2)

TIME ...

Imagine there is a bank which credits your account each morning with $86,400, car- ries over no balance from day to day, allows you to keep no cash balance, and every evening cancels whatever part of the amount you had failed to use during the day. What would you do? Draw out every cent, of course! Well, everyone has such a bank. Its name is TIME. Every morning, it credits you with 86,400 seconds. Every night it writes off, as lost, whatever of this you have failed to invest to good purpose. It carries over no balance. It allows no overdraft. Each day it opens a new account for you. Each night it burns the records of the day. If you fail to use the day's deposits, the loss is yours. There is no going back. There is no drawing against the "tomorrow". You must live in the present on today's deposits. Invest it so as to get from it the utmost in health, happi- ness and success! The clock is running. Make the most of today.. To realize the value of ONE YEAR Ask a student who has failed his exam. To realize the value of ONE MONTH Ask a mother who has given birth to a premature baby. To realize the value of ONE WEEK Ask an editor of a weekly newspaper. To realize the value of ONE DAY Ask a daily wage laborer who has ten kids to feed. To realize the value of ONE HOUR Ask the lovers who are waiting to meet or . . . To realize the value of ONE MINUTE Ask a person who has missed the train. To realize the value of ONE SECOND Ask a person who has survived an accident. To realize the value of ONE MILLI-SECOND Ask the person who has won a silver medal in Olympic. Treasure every moment that you have! And treasure it more because you shared it with someone special.. special enough to have your time... and remember time waits for no one ...

Short  Story  :

TIME

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