zlacker

Maybe I'm wrong, but that sounds like he was trying to get the formula for kinetic energy, which would be half em vee squared.

Just to be clear: I'm not questioning the story, just the details in the recollection :)

>>jostei+(OP)
I did wonder at the discrepancy at the time, so I re-listened to the audio several times carefully when I was writing the transcript above. To me, he is clearly saying gee rather than vee (could be an artifact of the recording though).

I'm sure Hillis knows more physics than I do (though I knew the equations of motion pretty well at one time), but he could easily have just mis-spoke. I didn't pursue this line of thought, but considered it might have been something to do with him deriving an expression for the vertical position in a gravitational field, perhaps in terms of horizontal motion or something.