He wanted the internal volume. Dipping the light bulb into the water would
require you to subtract the volume of the glass afterwords.

Bryan

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of
Karin Baker & Raymond Paquette
Sent: Monday, November 26, 2007 9:11 AM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: Calculate fuel consumption when idling?

That dummy!  Why didn't he just sink the bulb into the liquid and measure
the displacement?

>  You might appreciate this story. Thomas Edison gave a new assistant a
> > project, to see what the new assistant could do. He assigned him the
> task
> > of
> > determining the volume of a light bulb. The new assistant worked for
> > several
> > hours with formulas and calculations to get the volume of the odd shape.
> > When done, Edison looked at the result, and said ....that's close but
> not
> > quite right.       He then drilled a hole in the side of the light bulb,
> > filled it with a liquid, then poured the liquid out into a calibrated
> > measuring beaker, where the volume was easy to determine.   It took just
> > minutes, and was considerably more accurate.   Think simple first.
>
>