How Aaronometry was discovered

On 20 September 2006, five students were attempting to solve a physics problem:

Given

v₁ = 1.75 m/s                                                             (initial velocity)

a = -0.20 m/s²                                                           (acceleration)

t₁ = 0s                                                                        (initial time)

v_f = 0 m/s                                                                   (final velocity)

The task was to solve for t_f, the final time. The process which followed looked like this:

v_f = v_i + at

0 = 1.75 + (-0.20)t

t = 1.75 - 0.2

0 = 1.5

Now you notice there are several mistakes. This is because the student doing the problem at the time, Aaron Dandrea, was being given conflicting step-by-step instructions from both Edward Brumit and Logan Bachmann while an intentional effort at ruining his concentration was underway by Nick Elko and Brandon Lemon.

We of course know that you can't subtract t from both sides of the second line and end up with a positive t. In addition, 1.75-0.2=1.55, not 1.5.

However, nobody understood exactly where 1.5 came from, despite its being the key to the correct answer:

0 = 1.5t

⁰/_1.5 = t

t_f = 0

From this problem, the Aaronometric Constant () was created as:

= 0, 1.5