From Bill Courtney
A teenage reader related the creation of false experimental data by school science students (Letters, 4 June). I can assure younger readers that there is nothing new about this.
Back in 1964, my A-level physics practical examination required finding the local acceleration due to gravity, g, using the swinging pendulum method. At that time both metric and imperial units were on the syllabus.
Knowledgeable students were aware that g could be taken as either 981 centimetres per second squared or 32 feet per second squared. When we left the exam room, one of my friends boasted that he would probably be awarded full marks for this practical paper. Instead of “wasting time” doing the experiment, he had used his slide rule to create a beautiful straight-line graph. This might have impressed the examiner, had the value not been hopelessly inaccurate because the poor lad had got his imperial and metric units muddled up.
He failed the A-level physics exam and I have no idea what his subsequent career was.
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Altrincham, Cheshire, UK
