Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

Tombrello–51
of a wreck somewhere.” Traffic had been heavy, but it was moving at the speed limit. And three
hours later—something like that, and I was finally at Schlumberger.
And so I gave the Physics 11 students the problem. I give them Hartford and Brewster as
being, you know, the two points, and I said, “The traffic is moving at the speed limit. It is at
maximum capacity for the freeway. And somewhere in the middle, around Waterbury, they
close one lane for about a hundred yards. Nobody breaks the law, nobody exceeds the speed
limit. How long does it take me to get from Hartford to Brewster?” Now, there are some kids
who go on the Internet and look at the distance between Hartford and Brewster. They find out
the speed limit is 65 MPH. They divide the distance by the speed limit, and they get the time,
and of course, they don’t get in the course. Some people look at it and say, “Hmmm. You’ve
got three lanes and now you’ve got two lanes. What happens?” Suddenly, for that short period,
the available lanes can’t carry the traffic. And the traffic’s at maximum capacity at 65 mph.
What that does is, it sets up a shock wave, but how do you get a number out of it? And some of
the kids do really well.
Another problem came from a song that was popular in my youth called “Mairzy Doats.”
[Singing] “Mairzy doats and dozy doaks and liddle lamzy divy.” So, “Mares eat oats, and does
eat oaks, and little lambs eat ivy.” And I say, it’s an ecology problem. You got three species,
and you got three plants. What happens? It’s a highly nonlinear problem, and you’ve got to
make certain assumptions, and some very bright kids have done exceedingly well on that
problem.
So you see, the questions come from everywhere. They’re not real science, but they are
like science. They don’t have simple answers because they depend on what kind of assumptions
are you willing to make. It’s what you’re looking for. You are looking for people, first, who
don’t give up easily. Some have to have a bit of a sense of humor, because when things don’t go
well, you have to know how to be willing to start over. You have to be a little creative, but
creativity alone doesn’t do it. You have to stick to it. It’s like science. You really have to keep
working at these things. And what you want is this competition between brilliance and
willingness to slog it out and get a number out of it. Anyway, there have been a whole series of
problems, some more notorious than others.
Now let’s talk about Dario. Dario Amodei, a fantastic Physics 11 student from several
years back. I could have sold him to any national government as a treasure. I gave him to Steve
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