Crowbars, Light bulbs & Vacuum bags....

[bosco]

Riddle me this:

Crowbars, light bulbs and vacuum bags are to be stored in a three drawer, vertical file cabinet. Considering weight, what would be the safest arrangement?

A) Top Drawer-Crowbars. Middle Drawer-light bulbs. Bottom Drawer-Vacuum bags.

B) Top Drawer-Crowbars. Middle Drawer-Vacuum bags. Bottom Drawer-Light bulbs.

C) Top Drawer-Vacuum bags. Middle Drawer-Crowbars. Bottom Drawer- Light bulbs.

D) Top Drawer-Vacuum bags. Middle Drawer-Light bulbs. Bottom Drawer-Crowbars.

E) Top Drawer-Light bulbs. Middle Drawer-Vacuum bags. Bottom Drawer- Crowbars.

This is a sample question on the US Post Office Electronics Technician Test that I took yesterday. How do questions like this make it onto tests like this?
This is not a question from the actual test but there are some questions that resembled it.

Answer: E

[Jenni]

Seems to me that the answer would depend on how many of each would be put in the drawers. I would imagine that you could cram enough vaccuum bags into a drawer to outweigh 2 crowbars. Cause these would have to be really small crowbars to begin with.

[archie]

Putting the crowbar in the bottom drawer seems rather obvious as the heaviest object should go in the bottom drawer but it would be a 50/50 guess between lightbulbs and vaccum cleaner bags would it not be for 'Considering weight' in the question.
It'd be interesting to see some of the other questions.

[bosco]

I remember when I first hired in at Bethlehem there was a question on their test that involved an airplane and a cow. Go figure. Another one in involved a car tire, mud and which way the mud would fly off the tire on a certain rotation. I remember laughing out loud during the test. It was fun.

[HAL9000]

That's OK, I had a computer science class in university that the last question, which was an essay question worth 35% of the total exam, made me bust out laughing. The question itself wasn't funny, but when the professor asked what was so amusing, I told him I could answer that essay question in seven words. He said OK, so I wrote it down and handed it in. He took one look at it, paused, and wrote 35/35 on it. Don't remember what the question was right now, I just remember I aced that final with a 99%.

[BFD Deadeye]

Jeez, HAL, now you got me all curious. Please try to remember the question and answer, the suspense is killing me!

[HAL9000]

I've got that final packed away in a box in the basement somewhere, I've looked for it (although not too hard) and haven't found it yet. I felt bad about busting out laughing because some of my classmates spent a good hour of the exam writing an essay style answer in excess of three pages.