The myth of Niels Bohr and the barometer question

Neutral : for everyone

Water barometer
Source : Jean-Jacques MILAN
(Wikimedia commons)

In 1959 was published in the journal Pride of the American College Public Relations Association an essay entitled Angels on a Pin, by Alexander Calandra, professor of physics at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. The story is about a physics student who surprises his professor on a simple question of physics.

« On almost every level, this essay falls apart on critical analysis. I wonder why it has become such a legend in the physics community ? »
Donald Simanek, emeritus professor of physics at Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania.

The title is supposed to be a reference to medieval scholastics adept of meaningless questions such as How many angels can dance on the point of a pin ?
Personally, I see in this fable an illustration of the importance of creativity in sciences, a skill that is too rarely stimulated in the teaching of sciences, when it isn't consistently ignored...

The student is generally said to be Niels Henrik David Bohr (1885 - 1962), Nobel prize of Physics in 1922 and the referee is supposed to be the chemist Sir Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937), Nobel prize of Chemistry in 1908, even if they didn't meet until Bohr finished his scholarship.

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What use is math ?

I suggest a little pseudo-scientific experiment which goal is to literally picture how useful the above mentioned study can be.

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