The professor wrote the differential equation f²/f'=1 on the blackboard, and asked the students to solve it.

Everybody started working with the usual methods, except for a kid at the back of the class, who happened to have skipped that material, but was very bright.

Can you solve this equation without any integration?

Maybe this bright student misread the problem the same way I did at first, and was wondering why it took everyone so long to figure out that f^2 / f^1 = 1 simplified pretty easily to f = 1...

From the back of the classroom, a ' can look an awful lot like a little "1". :)

Posted by tomarken on 2006-05-02 15:45:43