From a netfriend:

I don’t know how many of you have seen / heard of the puzzle Plato’s Plight, but I found one some 20 years ago, and solved it. (It’s a 2-part puzzle). I solved it in like 7 seconds. Then I showed it to my son, who was about 6 at the time, and about the time I was going to tell him, “Not THAT way!” he solved it, about 1 second faster than I did.

Of course, there’s the story of how Tom Edison invented the electric light bulb. It took him some 10,000 tries to succeed, and people kept asking him why he kept trying, when it was OBVIOUSLY “impossible”.

He said, “Oh, it’s not impossible! I’ve just learned 10,000 ways that won’t work!”

I was taking a science course at university when I heard the following. As a graduate project, the “final exam,” students were each assigned a project to do. Each student was given a project, and the instructions were that he had to solve his problem without any help. He was allowed to discuss issues that came up with his dean, but he had to do all the “grunt work” totally on his own.

What each student was NOT told was that the school’s engineering department kept a list of “impossible puzzles,” tasks that were intriguing, but which were BEYOND the technology of the time.

This particular student was given a 3′ long cylinder of glass, roughly 1/32″ thick, a 1″ OD, and the instructions were to EVENLY coat the inside of the class cylinder with an even layer of paint proxy 1 micron thick on the inside of the tube.

AGAIN, the students were NOT told that they had each been assigned a task that was well beyond current technology.

Well, our hero worked up to the deadline, with no success. When he reported his findings to his dean, he was informed that he had passed, an “A” for his efforts, but that in fact, the task of coating a 3′ long, 1″ OD cylinder of glass with a 1 micron layer of paint on the inside.

The student replied, “Well, sir, if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to continue the experiment; I think I know to do it, I just need more time.”

The prof insisted that the task was not possible, but with the graduate PLEADING to continue (since the university had all the facilities and equipment), the prof allowed him one more week.

To cut to the chase, it took the student roughly a month, pleading his case several times, but when he was finished, he had invented the fluorescent light bulb.