Quote Originally Posted by brett friggin favre View Post
just took a test, and we had to solve this:

a guy's eating a salad on his balcony and unknowingly drips a drop of olive oil onto a pizza delivery man below, who sues for $10m because he claims the olive oil burned his scalp. prove that this is not possible

we were told to ignore heat loss to the air while falling, heat gain due to friction, and were not given a starting temperature or the temperature needed to burn the human scalp. we were given the specific heat of the oil as 1.97 kj/kg*°K.

this is an introduction to mechanical engineering course. i repeat, INTRODUCTION. the prof used to teach thermodynamics at MIT. now if i was in thermodynamics at MIT i bet i could figure this out, but for an INTRO TO FUCKING MECHANICAL ENGINEERING COURSE i think this is a bit absurd.
Woops, I put too much thought into this one. He's eating a salad so, if the oil is so hot that it would burn a scalp, it would burn his tongue. How to prove it's not possible? Look at his tongue.