Good thing he wasn’t asked to tell time from one of those things that has 12 numbers and 2 dials.
This was posted by a friend who teaches various physics at a local college. I thought you guys could relate to him.
In lab today, there was a point where students had to measure room temperature for a calculation. The following exchange ensued.
Student: “How are we supposed to find room temperature? Use the internet?”
Me: “No. Measure it.”
Student: “How? Do we have a thermometer?”
Me: “Yes. Turn around. The thermometers are behind you.”
Student turns around, then looks back: “Where?”
Me: “They yellow things.”
Student picks one up. “Where’s the display?”
Me, confused: “It’s a thermometer. Read the temperature by where the top of the fluid is.”
Student: “Huh? But where are the digits?”
Me, more confused: “The temperatures are written on the glass.”
Student: “But, it isn’t digital. How do you read it.”
Me, just staring at the student trying to think of something to say other than what I was thinking.
I’m sure we’ve all encountered old technology or methods that we’ve not recognized or never used. I’ve never used a slide rule. I got hasty instruction in - and have since forgotten - how to use vernier calipers.
Insofar as the subject of the passage it’s entirely possible that they’ve encountered precious few analog instruments. Digital thermometers were a commonplace thing in the late 80s for every from measuring air temperature, oven temperature, body temperature. DMMs, bathroom scales, home weather stations, clocks for similarly as long. More recently: digital calipers, laser “tape measures”.
Toss in overly cautious helicopter parenting and odds are depressingly high they’ve rarely had … uncurated … experiences nor been allowed the risk of being around power tools, labs, shop floors, etc.
Scrollbar. Slider. Rotary knob. That Price-is-Right wheel in iOS. Progress bar. The person has been exposed to digital versions of analog instruments since birth. If the story is reasonably accurate the student suffers from a lack of motivation instead of a lack of experience. (I’ve crossed paths with such people more than once. It’s not a millennial thing. {Though that reaction to such situations does seem uniquely millennial })
That’s also a possibility. But the entire passage reeks of two things to me:
The age-old tradition of ragging on upcoming generations
Someone being put on the spot and predictably failing to pull a rabbit from a hat
As a tail-end X’er I heard variations all of the same claptrap from my parent’s and grandparent’s generation 15-20 years ago as we entered the workforce. Thankfully much of that was pre internet ubiquity, pre digital permanence, and pre widespread awareness of demographic generations so it wasn’t the widespread echo chamber that ragging on Millennials has become.
