Using "common sense" or "obvious logic," I picked the wrong answer on a physics quiz in 1956 (not my only wrong answer, but one mistake that I haven't forgotten). The question was about the internal pressure on the bottoms of two conical containers of water -- identical in all dimensions but with one resting on its broad base and the other resting on its narrow base -- each the upside-down twin of the other, both the same height, with the same quantity of water inside.
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<br>Now that I know the physics involved, I have no trouble "seeing" that the internal pressure exerted on the narrow bottom of the one container is exactly the same as the internal pressure exerted on the wide bottom of the other container. But Boy! I couldn't "see" it when Dr Jeppesen said they were the same!
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<br>Many proven facts and principles of physics aren't obvious or compatible with "common sense" -- at first look.
