By Sumay
Watch the Blue Comet Conundrum here:
Conundrums are a very good way to hone your ability to use critical thinking skills and to back up your argument with reasons. For the week of Thanksgiving we decided to make a special demo day where students can choose a conundrum and argue their point for it. In this article, I will be analyzing the Blue Comet Conundrum made by AstraNova school.
Essentially the conundrum is this: There is a comet that shoots through the sky on a Thursday and there are three people who want to name it. A scientist who predicted the comet would come soon on Monday, a student who captured a picture of the comet on Tuesday thinking it was a plane, and an astronaut who saw the comet from space on Wednesday. I think that the scientist should be able to name it and I will walk through my reasoning:
The Astronaut: There are multiple reasons why the astronaut shouldn’t be the one to name the comet. The first is that in the conundrum it is made clear that the whole world will be able to see the comet, so the fact that the astronaut also saw the comet isn’t much of a reason. Also, the astronaut was the last to know of the comet out of the three candidates.
The Student: I don’t think the student should be able to name it either since anyone could’ve taken the photo of the comet and the fact that she thought it was a plane proves her ignorance about the comet. Plus, she also found out about the comet after the scientist who predicted the comet would come the day prior.
The Scientist: One thing to also consider is that on Monday the scientist publicly announced that the comet would come but was probably researching the comet long before then. He also spent a lot more effort trying to understand and learn about the comet whereas the other two people had just found out about it.
This was the first conundrum that I watched and found it very fun to talk with other people about their opinions and reasonings for this conundrum. I would love to hear your opinion on who should be able to name the comet in the comments below and other fun conundrums you found interesting.