5 ms·

MIT graduates cannot power a light bulb with a battery

36 points by temp8964 5y ago

sjwalter 5y ago
Guy who answers, "maybe" to the query, "Can you light this bulb with a battery" seems the only to actually be able to do it. "Maybe" is the answer to almost all y/n engineering questions.
- ajuc 5y ago
  They probably asked 50 people and show only the most interesting ones. Still funny.
- daveslash 5y ago
  Another common answer to engineering questions is "with enough time and money" ;-)
  - riedel 5y ago
    True and those guys were far too expensive for whatever they were paying.
- kibbleble 5y ago
  How many people does it take to change a lightbulb...
mikewarot 5y ago
Yikes! I thought it had to be a trick question. Too much simulation, not enough hands on labs with chips exploding off the breadboards because of positive being red {not black like in accounting}. 8) Given a big enough battery, of course, for a brief amount of time the wire itself can light up. I've melted plenty of bare 14 AWG wire across some bolts screwed into a big aircraft NiCad cell when I was a kid.
- daveslash 5y ago
  Forget the bulb - With just a battery and a wire, I can make a light bulb! /s Jokes aside, as a kid I took super thin, uninsulated, copper wire meant for making jewelry and wrapped it pole-to-pole around a D cell batter. Burned my tiny child fingers and the copper wire began melting through the battery casing. I don't recall how the situation concluded...I called my parents after something began smoking.... That same year, I also made a "light bulb" by placing 0.5mm Mechanical pencil led across the terminals of a 6V moped battery.
  - klyrs 5y ago
    I used a pair of insulated pliers when I stuck a staple into an outlet... thankful for that circuit breaker. Memories like this are sometimes the scariest part of being a parent. You never know what your kid will do, but I remember the stupid shit I did, and my kid shows the same inability to learn from anything but reality hitting hard.
  - pajko 5y ago
    Used to connect a spring to a 9V battery and cut polystyrol with it in my childhood. Also off the shelf children's toys were available at that time based on the same concept.
- Atheros 5y ago
  I think it was a trick question. At 1:02 you can see the bulb- it looks like a 120v candelabra bulb. I suspect that part of the test was seeing if those who could assemble the circuit correctly could also identify why it didn't light up. At 1:21, the interviewer asking, "Do you know why that didn't work?" leads to me to believe that they were trying to help them speculate as to the issue. The man at 1:58 was given a 1.5v bulb.
ecshafer 5y ago
Though we don't know how many of these people have any experience with electronics, one says they are a mechanical engineer, perhaps the others are chemists or economics or any number of non science majors. This is a bit disturbing, though one who said they needed another wire seems kind of like they were just not thinking outside of the box, and I think with a table more could do it. I would also bet that more could do it but weren't shown on camera. Overall I do believe that this is a problem and more common than one would think. I recall, as a computer science undergrad, when I was doing my senior thesis (which was a low level project), that I mentioned a trouble was with pulse width modulation on the board I was using. And I was rather surprised (shocked really) how so many computer science majors (who at minimum would have taken some physics, and also a basic electronics course) did not know what basic electronics things like pulse width modulation worked, or how a servo worked, as these were things I picked up as kid for fun.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Did not watch the video, but it really feels strange to me, basic electronics used to be common to all degrees on the university, only on the second year did it get specialised into each specific degree. So a lame Portuguese university does better than MIT?
- HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
  While I get your overall point, I'd hardly consider pulse-width modulation as "basic electronics." IIRC, I first encountered it in a senior-year EE Communications Theory class as a subset of Duty-Cycle Modulation. And I have to assume when you say "how a servo worked" that you don't mean how to analyze a servomechanism or feedback control system (Bode plots & root locus, anyone?), but how to control an R/C servo. Sure, it's common for hobbyists using R/C servos to know the term these days, but I can't really consider that universal knowledge. I'd be pretty impressed if a CS interview candidate even knew what an RC servo was.
  - bcrl 5y ago
    The 555 timer IC book I got when I was a kid in the 1980s taught me about pulse width modulation when I was less only 10 or 11 years old. Granted, I had a father who was an electronics technician that got me started with a Radio Shack 101 electronics kit. While such knowledge is quite accessible on the internet these days, there's just so much more high level knowledge that people are driven towards, it's not surprising that many of the basics are missed. The level of complexity in modern devices makes it nearly impossible to tinker with them, and you can't salvage surface mount parts as easily as discrete components once made electronics accessible. Gone are the days when most electronic devices shipped with schematics and were eminently hackable.
dusted 5y ago
I remember bringing a bulb and battery and wire to kindergarten once to show how to do that to the other kids, but I never showed because I realized how childish a thing it was and got embarrassed because everyone would laugh at me for choosing such a simple thing.. should have demonstrated it at MIT instead I guess.
justin66 5y ago
There's a similar video (also from the late eighties, and I suspect from the same series of videos?) wherein Harvard seniors are queried as to why summer is warm and winter is cold. They interviewed a couple dozen people and two gave a correct answer.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
LorenPechtel 5y ago
How many of these had my first reaction to it: Of course not, not enough voltage.
- djmips 5y ago
  Why would that be your first reaction? Why would you assume a 120 V bulb?
  - LorenPechtel 5y ago
    "Light bulb", I picture the A19 120V bulbs.
xt00 5y ago
Yea pretty lame question.. given 1 wire, a battery, a bulb that has 2 terminals but both are not totally obvious—and likely designed to run substantially higher voltages thru it, and testing the bulb outside (so if the bulb lights up very slightly you might not see it) with no table or anything to set things down on feels more like a trick question than a legitimate test. A more direct question should have been, here is a lightbulb, does it have a positive and negative terminal? Ok if it does have a positive and negative terminals where are they? Does it likely matter for this type of bulb which terminal is positive or negative? If somebody answers all of that then now try connecting the bulb to a battery, but if they are not familiar with this type of bulb likely they will be a bit confused..
- djmips 5y ago
  it was an incandescent, not polarized. It's not a lame question. You could ask similar questions about how a computer works to graduating comp-sci students and get similarly disappointing results.
djmips 5y ago
Sounds like Hacker News readers cannot power a light bulb with a wire and a battery either.
oceliker 5y ago
As an MIT alum I have to point out that all the students interviewed are, in fact, Harvard graduates. edit: except for the only person who actually got it to work.

36 points by temp8964 5y ago

Guy who answers, "maybe" to the query, "Can you light this bulb with a battery" seems the only to actually be able to do it. "Maybe" is the answer to almost all y/n engineering questions.

ajuc 5y ago
They probably asked 50 people and show only the most interesting ones. Still funny.
daveslash 5y ago
Another common answer to engineering questions is "with enough time and money" ;-)
- riedel 5y ago
  True and those guys were far too expensive for whatever they were paying.
kibbleble 5y ago
How many people does it take to change a lightbulb...

mikewarot 5y ago

Yikes! I thought it had to be a trick question. Too much simulation, not enough hands on labs with chips exploding off the breadboards because of positive being red {not black like in accounting}. 8) Given a big enough battery, of course, for a brief amount of time the wire itself can light up. I've melted plenty of bare 14 AWG wire across some bolts screwed into a big aircraft NiCad cell when I was a kid.

daveslash 5y ago
Forget the bulb - With just a battery and a wire, I can make a light bulb! /s Jokes aside, as a kid I took super thin, uninsulated, copper wire meant for making jewelry and wrapped it pole-to-pole around a D cell batter. Burned my tiny child fingers and the copper wire began melting through the battery casing. I don't recall how the situation concluded...I called my parents after something began smoking.... That same year, I also made a "light bulb" by placing 0.5mm Mechanical pencil led across the terminals of a 6V moped battery.
- klyrs 5y ago
  I used a pair of insulated pliers when I stuck a staple into an outlet... thankful for that circuit breaker. Memories like this are sometimes the scariest part of being a parent. You never know what your kid will do, but I remember the stupid shit I did, and my kid shows the same inability to learn from anything but reality hitting hard.
- pajko 5y ago
  Used to connect a spring to a 9V battery and cut polystyrol with it in my childhood. Also off the shelf children's toys were available at that time based on the same concept.
Atheros 5y ago
I think it was a trick question. At 1:02 you can see the bulb- it looks like a 120v candelabra bulb. I suspect that part of the test was seeing if those who could assemble the circuit correctly could also identify why it didn't light up. At 1:21, the interviewer asking, "Do you know why that didn't work?" leads to me to believe that they were trying to help them speculate as to the issue. The man at 1:58 was given a 1.5v bulb.

ecshafer 5y ago

Though we don't know how many of these people have any experience with electronics, one says they are a mechanical engineer, perhaps the others are chemists or economics or any number of non science majors. This is a bit disturbing, though one who said they needed another wire seems kind of like they were just not thinking outside of the box, and I think with a table more could do it. I would also bet that more could do it but weren't shown on camera. Overall I do believe that this is a problem and more common than one would think. I recall, as a computer science undergrad, when I was doing my senior thesis (which was a low level project), that I mentioned a trouble was with pulse width modulation on the board I was using. And I was rather surprised (shocked really) how so many computer science majors (who at minimum would have taken some physics, and also a basic electronics course) did not know what basic electronics things like pulse width modulation worked, or how a servo worked, as these were things I picked up as kid for fun.

pjmlp 5y ago
Did not watch the video, but it really feels strange to me, basic electronics used to be common to all degrees on the university, only on the second year did it get specialised into each specific degree. So a lame Portuguese university does better than MIT?
HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
While I get your overall point, I'd hardly consider pulse-width modulation as "basic electronics." IIRC, I first encountered it in a senior-year EE Communications Theory class as a subset of Duty-Cycle Modulation. And I have to assume when you say "how a servo worked" that you don't mean how to analyze a servomechanism or feedback control system (Bode plots & root locus, anyone?), but how to control an R/C servo. Sure, it's common for hobbyists using R/C servos to know the term these days, but I can't really consider that universal knowledge. I'd be pretty impressed if a CS interview candidate even knew what an RC servo was.
- bcrl 5y ago
  The 555 timer IC book I got when I was a kid in the 1980s taught me about pulse width modulation when I was less only 10 or 11 years old. Granted, I had a father who was an electronics technician that got me started with a Radio Shack 101 electronics kit. While such knowledge is quite accessible on the internet these days, there's just so much more high level knowledge that people are driven towards, it's not surprising that many of the basics are missed. The level of complexity in modern devices makes it nearly impossible to tinker with them, and you can't salvage surface mount parts as easily as discrete components once made electronics accessible. Gone are the days when most electronic devices shipped with schematics and were eminently hackable.

dusted 5y ago

I remember bringing a bulb and battery and wire to kindergarten once to show how to do that to the other kids, but I never showed because I realized how childish a thing it was and got embarrassed because everyone would laugh at me for choosing such a simple thing.. should have demonstrated it at MIT instead I guess.

justin66 5y ago

There's a similar video (also from the late eighties, and I suspect from the same series of videos?) wherein Harvard seniors are queried as to why summer is warm and winter is cold. They interviewed a couple dozen people and two gave a correct answer.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

LorenPechtel 5y ago

How many of these had my first reaction to it: Of course not, not enough voltage.

djmips 5y ago
Why would that be your first reaction? Why would you assume a 120 V bulb?
- LorenPechtel 5y ago
  "Light bulb", I picture the A19 120V bulbs.

xt00 5y ago

Yea pretty lame question.. given 1 wire, a battery, a bulb that has 2 terminals but both are not totally obvious—and likely designed to run substantially higher voltages thru it, and testing the bulb outside (so if the bulb lights up very slightly you might not see it) with no table or anything to set things down on feels more like a trick question than a legitimate test. A more direct question should have been, here is a lightbulb, does it have a positive and negative terminal? Ok if it does have a positive and negative terminals where are they? Does it likely matter for this type of bulb which terminal is positive or negative? If somebody answers all of that then now try connecting the bulb to a battery, but if they are not familiar with this type of bulb likely they will be a bit confused..

djmips 5y ago
it was an incandescent, not polarized. It's not a lame question. You could ask similar questions about how a computer works to graduating comp-sci students and get similarly disappointing results.

djmips 5y ago

Sounds like Hacker News readers cannot power a light bulb with a wire and a battery either.

oceliker 5y ago

As an MIT alum I have to point out that all the students interviewed are, in fact, Harvard graduates. edit: except for the only person who actually got it to work.