Slow boiling frogs
It is generally believed that a frog placed in cold water and raise the temperature so gradually that the increase in heat is not perceptible to the frog at any given moment, the frog will make no attempt to escape from the vessel in which is heated. In fact the story gets extended to believe that the poor frog starts enjoying the cozy warmth that it dozes happily and dies without even opening its eyes! Sadism, indeed!
But why slow heating? It is at once conceded that if you put the same frog in boiling water it will quickly jump out!
This anecdote is generally used to illustrate an axiom that you can introduce any change in the system very gradually such that the folks affected by it do not perceive the change immediately and react against it. It also means that you will get cooked without your knowledge if you just wallow in the comfort of the present environment if you resist change.
What about the veracity of the “slow boiling frog” theory? Snopes discounts it and votes an outright “False”. This is what Snopes has to say about this belief:
The legend is entirely incorrect! The ‘critical thermal maxima’ of many species of frogs have been determined by several investigators. In this procedure, the water in which a frog is submerged is heated gradually at about
2 degrees Fahrenheit per minute. As the temperature of the water is gradually increased, the frog will eventually become more and more active in attempts to escape the heated water. If the container size and opening allow the frog to jump out, it will do so.
A lesson from the legend of Raja Harischandra
During my travel in the chair car of a train from Bangaloru to Chennai in India, I had a school-going boy on the adjacent seat. He was reading the legend of Raja Harischandra in comics form.
After he finished reading it, I asked him whether he liked the story. The boy was very emotional in his reply. He was visibly indignant.
“I hate this Raja Harischandra. He was so adamant and obstinate. My father always tells me that I should not behave stubbornly like that. One should be flexible to the demands of the situations. And that king submitted himself to the pranks of the wicked sage. What kind of a sage he is to torture a gullible king like that.
And what right this man has got to sell his wife and children just to repay his imaginary debt to a sage. He should be ashamed of himself to sell his own son.Will my dad do such a thing? I wonder why people speak high of his conduct. This is a bad example.”
He ranted on in his convent English, with matching gesticulations.
I quizzed him as to what was the moral of the story according to him. His reply was an eye-opener!
“What this book teaches me is that if you are dogmatic and foolishly sticking on to some belief and be derelict of your duties as a king, husband and a parent, you will end up suffering like Harischandra in addition to causing ignominy and endless suffering to your family too.”
I can’t help agreeing with him in toto. There is nothing like an absolute truth in this world. The truth according to your perception may differ from mine!
The Barometer Problem
It is one the urban legends doing rounds around the internet. It has attained such a longevity that it pops up over and over again in different versions, sometimes attributed to a celebrity to bestow it a bit of respectability!
Here is the story:-
Some time ago I received a call from a colleague who asked if I would be the referee on the grading of an examination question. He was about to give a student a zero for his answer to a physics question, while the student claimed he should receive a perfect score and would if the system were not set up against the student: The instructor and the student agreed to submit this to an impartial arbiter, and I was selected.
I went to my colleague’s office and read the examination question: “Show how it is possible to determine the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer.”
The student had answered: “Take a barometer to the top of the building, attach a long rope to it, lower the barometer to the street and then bring it up, measuring the length of the rope. The length of the rope is the height of the building.”
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About Me
I am S.K!
Ok, what's the big deal, you may ask! But you may miss a good deal if you do not dwell deep into this web site, specially hand-crafted for you. But what about me, the person? Wait, I am not good at making things up. If you stumble upon a good-sounding résumé, please pass it on to me!
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