"Gamow discovered that the elevator went down five out of six times when he pressed the button and that, only one out of six times, it would go in the desired direction, up."
"Gamow and Stern made a joke of it, speculating that perhaps new cars were continuously being made on the building's roof and sent down for storage in the basement."
Physicists George Gamow and Marvin Stern observed a peculiar phenomenon with elevators in their six-story building in the 1950s. Gamow noted that when he pressed the button to go up, the elevator usually arrived from above, going down. He recorded that the elevator went down five out of six times when he pressed the button, only going up one out of six times. This oddity led to humorous speculation about elevators being manufactured on the roof and sent down for storage.
Read at www.scientificamerican.com
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