The Fair Share

There is a building near your school with two tuition rooms side by side. Room A has been running evening coaching for three years. Room B opened last month, a new batch of students, a second teacher, good business. The problem started on the first evening Room B switched on its lights. Room A's lights went dim. Not off. Dim. Just enough to make the board harder to read, just enough to make the students in Room A shift in their seats and squint, just enough for the teacher in Room A to walk next door and have a firm word. Room B said: "We're not doing anything wrong." Room A said: "Our lights are dim." Both were correct. The contractor who wired the building — in a hurry, years ago — ran both rooms on a single loop. One after the other. What the first room gets, the second room gets whatever is left. When Room B switches on, it takes its share. Room A's share shrinks. This is the oldest wiring mistake in the book. Every electrician knows it. Every physics teacher knows why it is wrong. The fix is to wire the rooms differently — not one after the other, but each room connected directly to the source, independently, so what one room does has no effect on the other. The fix has a name. Today, your team is going to build both arrangements, measure the difference, and prove which one every building in the country should use.