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When is it OK to Use a Tragedy for a Math Problem?
How far do you have to be from the event?
Some geeky friends and I were chatting today about a math problem that involved the Space Shuttle Challenger. For those who don’t remember, the Challenger exploded after taking off in 1986 and everybody on board died.
A friend mentioned that he was given an extra credit math problem after the explosion in which students were asked to calculate the reaction products and energy released by the disaster.
My first reaction to this was — how cool! As a geek, I liked trying to solve interesting problems and this one would have intrigued me.
It reminded me of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse, which I also considered an intriguing problem. The mathematical explanation for the collapse came down to the development of a Kármán vortex street. The vortex frequency was calculated by multiplying the flow velocity by a constant called the Strouhal number, and then dividing that by characteristic length, which in this case was 8 feet.
Then I realized — the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapsed in 1940, and no one died.
The math problem had been given to my friend, on the other hand, less than a week after the Challenger’s explosion killed everyone on board.
