On Mon, 30 Jun 1997 01:08:40 -0500, Richard Lawson wrote:

Thomas R Jefferys wrote:

So, I'm sorry Richard, but your answer is wrong.

Heh, well, we could get into a flame war here if we wanted to, but let's
not start one.  I'll just say that I'm right, and we'll leave it alone.

Smiley when you say that, pal. :-P

At the risk of continuing a somewhat pointless debate, there's a couple
of things that could be pointed out.

1) There are a couple of ways to interpret "physically impossible". When
you say this, do you mean that something is impossible *in principle*,
that it can never be done no matter what the situation, like exceeding
the speed of light? Or do you mean that it won't work *in these
particular circumstances*?

Wyrm and Sebastian have explained why the first interpretation is wrong
here. But the second might be right -- it is author's discretion; how
super-human do you want Ranma to be in your story?

2) Who says that Ranma knows anything about physics anyway? He's only
been in High School for a couple of weeks at the time of this story. Not
only was he home-schooled for much of his life, but he was home schooled
BY GENMA fer Gods' sake. He might think that what he's trying to do is
physically impossible even if it's not, and that belief might cause him
to fail.

Maybe I could use this as a discussion question next time I teach
physics. Wonder what the admins would think if Viz "Graphic Novel" #2
was a required book for a science course? :-)

Gary Kleppe
kleppe@execpc.com, Home page http://www.execpc.com/~kleppe
My fanfics and the FFML map are on my comics/manga page,
       http://www.execpc.com/~kleppe/comics