From John Gardiner
Students suing a university (Feedback, 27 May) because the work was too hard? Perish the thought!
My Year 10 chemistry class of 14 to 15-year-olds thought it was a good idea, but felt that the Pace University students had given up on too easy a problem. At $1796 per tonne and an exchange rate of $1.6 to £1 today they quickly calculated that the tonne comprised 37 037 moles at 3p each. That is 2 × 1023 atoms for every penny.
They also pointed out that they had to deal with the additional calculation of a currency conversion.
