The Pliss Constant....

[poltr1]

Every so often, someone or something from my past will pop into my head for no apparent reason.

Today it was "the Pliss constant". It was devised by someone at my high school -- I think it was Joe Pliss -- who used it as an elegant "fudge factor" on a physics exam. The word spread about it. Someone else, who was in the same class, later tried to use it in a college-level physics course, and got full credit for the problem. One of the explanations I've heard was "It's so new it's not in the most recent CRC Handbook of Chemistry & Physics."

Leafing through the CRC book -- this book is huge! -- I came across something called Beer's Law. After snickering for a few seconds, I read what it was. It has something to do with absorption of light in a liquid. Here's what the Wikipedia has to say about it.

Comments

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

Yes, Beer's Law is used for measuring the amount of alcohol in a sample of an alcoholic beverage. We did it in a lab in Chem 102. (It was dodgy back then for us not-allowed-to-drink students to be analyzing samples of beer and wine; today I suspect it wouldn't be allowed at all. Even though a taste test was not part of the analysis.) Unfortunately, I don't remember any of the chemistry involved. I suppose I could look at the Wikipedia entry.