During the first year of our engineering degree, we will mostly like have very little or limited connection to our department or to our faculties. While we are entering into the second year or third semester of our engineering degree, we have been warned by our seniors about one of our professors and received several tips from them. The famous tip I received was:
"Please keep your heads down. Do not try to answer any of his questions even if you know the answer. It will lead only to disaster from there."
I am not the kind of guy who will keep his mouth shut if i know the answer. Some of them got cobwebbed by his questions in third semester. I thought my turn will take some time. Yes, it did take time. I have survived the third semester without much damage.
But in fourth semester, my day has arrived. He was teaching about a 8-bit microprocessor in our class and he asked some question. The answer for this question will be 216. But he is not satisfied with the answer 216 and he wanted the numerical value of it.
Everyone is alert to the situation and noone wants to answer this question. But he is like Ghazni Muhammad and will not fall back till he gets what he want. So he changed his question and asked "What is the value of 28" since it is a 8-bit processor. Since I am one of those 'geniuses' who will answer the question even the monstrous questions if it is of mathematical genre. I answered as "256". In that moment I realized I might be in for some trouble. But I have decided to take him down since it falls under my area of interest.
Prof: 29
Me: 512
Prof: 210
Me: 1024
Prof: 211
Me: 2048
I can hear couple of people whispering the answer to their neighbour alongside me even though they are afraid to confront him. But it has gradually disappeared once the speed of the questions are increased by him.
He has increased the speed of the questions exponentially and my answer also reached him exponentially faster. The answers have reached him within the fraction of a second. It started to look out like we both are having a verbal battle out there. Our classmates started looking at each other like how you would normally watch the movement of tennis ball between two players in a tennis match if you are seated anywhere behind the umpires' chair or near the net.
Prof: 212
Me: 4096
Prof: 213
Me: 8192
Prof: 214
Me: 16384
Prof: 215
Me: 32768
Prof: 216
Me: 65356
To much of his delight, I have responded the most important question with the wrong answer. I said "65356" instead of the correct answer 65536. It is enough for him to do what he can do best. i.e. Teasing the student who answers the question. He has literally mocked at me for not knowing this answer. But none of them in our class laughed at me and hence he marched on and on. I believe he definitely don't know the answer for the next powers of 2 but still he carried on because he wanted to embarrass me.
Prof: 217
Me: 131072
Me: 131072
Prof: 218
Me: 262144
Me: 262144
Prof: 219
Me: 524288
Me: 524288
Prof: 220
Me: 1048576
Me: 1048576
Prof: 221
Me: 2097152
Me: 2097152
Prof: 222
Me: 4194304
Prof: 223
Me: 8388608
Prof: 224
Me: 16777216
Finally I believe he ran out of the gas and moved onto the next topic. At this moment in my life, I believed that I am really special with numbers. Do you all agree with me on this?
Note: He also came for our Microprocessor lab. More on that later.
With Love,
Anand
Me: 4194304
Prof: 223
Me: 8388608
Prof: 224
Me: 16777216
Finally I believe he ran out of the gas and moved onto the next topic. At this moment in my life, I believed that I am really special with numbers. Do you all agree with me on this?
Note: He also came for our Microprocessor lab. More on that later.
With Love,
Anand
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