From: utzoo!decvax!microsof!fluke!witters
Newsgroups: net.jokes
Title: Re: mathematician, physicist, engineer
Article-I.D.: fluke.670
Posted: Thu Jan 20 08:32:14 1983
Received: Fri Jan 21 03:02:22 1983
References: rabbit.1068

As long as these jokes are popular, I'll submit one I heard from an Electrical
Engineering Professor.

A mathemetician, an engineer, and a physicist were challenged to measure the
height of a building.  The most accurate measure would win a prize.  They were
each given a ball of string, a meter stick, and a stopwatch.  The mathemetician
went to the top of the building, lowered the string over the side, and measured
its length with the meter stick.  The physicist attached a weight to the string,
lowered it over the side, started it swinging, and measured the period with the
stopwatch.  She then calculated the length of the string from the period.  The
engineer went to the building's archetect and said "I'll give you this ball of
string, this meter stick, and this really nice stopwatch if you tell me how
tall the building is".

The Professor went on to give a moral about not re-inventing the wheel.