h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

*How* many new posts? I think something somewhere needs a bit of a tweak...

How do you sink a Norwegian Submarine?
You dive down and knock on the hatch.

How do you sink the same Submarine again?
You dive down and knock on the hatch. They'll then open it and say: 'Hah! We won't fall for it this time!"


Oh, you didn't actually want me to tell a joke?:/

Not specifically. But it's interesting to see the cultural differences between Sweden and the UK, in that it's a Norwegian submarine rather than an Irish one.

I know. I've been told that before. Then again, if you go to Norway, the Submarine is Swedish instead.

I figured it might be.

What's this cDonalds thingy you're having diffs with then?

cDonalds

Eh?

Oh dear. I fear it's a reference to a TV show none of you have seen.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/lookaroundyou

My problem is this: Jean is shorter than Brutus but taller than Imhotep. Imhotep is taller than Jean but shorter than Lord Scotland. Lord Scotland is twice as tall as Jean and Brutus put together, but only 1/12 as tall as Millsy. Millsy is a constant height of x-y. If Jean stands one nautical mile away from Lord Scotland, how tall is Imhotep?

It's got me baffled.

Would you like a nice and warm cup of ? Don't worry, the people in white will come and help you.

It looks to me as if Jean and Imhotep are the same heigth .

No it says quite clearly that one of them is taller than the other one.
Is Imhotep wearing insoles?

Ah but it says that Jean is taller than Imhotep and Imhotep taller than Jean, doesn't it?

It seems to me that there's a mess-up in there, somehow..

"Jean is shorter than Brutus but taller than Imhotep. Imhotep is taller than Jean..."

In one place you say that Jean is taller than Imhotep, but in the very next sentence, you state that Imhotep is taller than Jane. It doesn't make sense.
As far as I can figure that out, there's not enough information to be able to calculate how tall Imhotep is, cause it never says how much taller/shorter than Jean he is. Also, you don't know how tall Jean is as the only information we have is that she and Brutus put together are half as tall as Lord Scotland. So the most you can say given the information you gave us is this.

Millsy is given a constant height of, let's say 24 feet (tall person).
Lord Scotland would then be 2 feet (1/12 of Millsy).
The combined height of Jean and Brutus would be 1 foot, where Jean would be at the most 5½ inches since she's shorter than Brutus.
After that, it's anybody's guess. Personally, I don't see how it can matter how far away from you someone is, he/she will still be the same height.

I'm still confused by "Which is smallest: 0, 0.0 or -0?"

In the end I had to cheat and look at the answer at the end of the programme.

The answer is: Imhotep is invisible.

What? They can't do that! That's cheating just to get out of a problem they realised couldn't be solved...

That's like a question I got durig a maths test.
"If you have a breakign distance of 15 meters when you drive at 50km/h and you know that your breaking distance quadruples when doubling your speed, how fast did a car drive if the police found break skid marks that were 75 meters at an accident site where the car had run into a wall?"

The answer: I don't know, cause since it was an accident, his breaking distance is cut short by the wall. Therefor it's impossible to say how fast he was driving. He could've been driving at 100km/h or 300km/h, the skid marks still wouldn't be any longer, cause the wall abruptly stopped his endeavour to break to a standstill.

After that, my maths teacher didn't like me.

The wall was invisible.

Ku'Reshtin - I would have been quite happy with your answer . There's a similar story amongst physicists:

Sir Ernest Rutherford, President of the Royal Academy, and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics, related the following story:

"Some time ago I received a call from a colleague. He was about to give a student a zero for his answer to a physics question, while the student claimed a perfect score. The instructor and the student agreed to an impartial arbiter, and I was selected.

I read the examination question: "Show how it is possible to determine the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer." The student had answered: "Take the barometer to the top of the building, attach a long rope to it, lower it to the street, and then bring it up, measuring the length of the rope. The length of the rope is the height of the building."

The student really had a strong case for full credit since he had really answered the question completely and correctly! On the other hand, if full credit were given, it could well contribute to a high grade in his physics course and certify competence in physics, but the answer did not confirm this.

I suggested that the student have another try. I gave the student six minutes to answer the question with the warning that the answer should show some knowledge of physics. At the end of five minutes, he hadn't written anything. I asked if he wished to give up, but he said he had many answers to this problem; he was just thinking of the best one. I excused myself for interrupting him and asked him to please go on.

In the next minute, he dashed off his answer, which read:

"Take the barometer to the top of the building and lean over the edge of the roof. Drop the barometer, timing its fall with a stopwatch. Then, using the formula x=0.5*a*t^2, calculate the height of the building."

At this point, I asked my colleague if he would give up. He conceded, and gave the student almost full credit.

While leaving my colleague's office, I recalled that the student had said that he had other answers to the problem, so I asked him what they were. "Well," said the student, "there are many ways of getting the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer.

For example, you could take the barometer out on a sunny day and measure the height of the barometer, the length of its shadow, and the length of the shadow of the building, and by the use of simple proportion, determine the height of the building."

"Fine," I said, "and others?"

"Yes," said the student, "there is a very basic measurement method you will like. In this method, you take the barometer and begin to walk up the stairs. As you climb the stairs, you mark off the length of the barometer along the wall. You then count the number of marks, and this will give you the height of the building in barometer units." "A very direct method."

"Of course. If you want a more sophisticated method, you can tie the barometer to the end of a string, swing it as a pendulum, and determine the value of g [gravity] at the street level and at the top of the building. From the difference between the two values of g, the height of the building, in principle, can be calculated."

"On this same tack, you could take the barometer to the top of the building, attach a long rope to it, lower it to just above the street, and then swing it as a pendulum. You could then calculate the height of the building by the period of the precession".

"Finally," he concluded, "there are many other ways of solving the problem. Probably the best," he said, "is to take the barometer to the basement and knock on the superintendent's door. When the superintendent answers, you speak to him as follows: 'Mr. Superintendent, here is a fine barometer. If you will tell me the height of the building, I will give you this barometer."

At this point, I asked the student if he really did not know the conventional answer to this question. He admitted that he did, but said that he was fed up with high school and college instructors trying to teach him how to think."

--------------

The name of the student was Niels Bohr (1885-1962): Danish Physicist; Nobel Prize 1922; best known for proposing the first 'model' of the atom with protons & neutrons, and various energy state of the surrounding electrons -- the familiar icon of the small nucleus circled by three elliptical orbits ... but more significantly, an innovator in Quantum Theory.

Now that's what I call thinking.

I liked his first answer....

That maths teacher that didn't like my answer with the car breaking got irritated at me for being a pedant during another test..
The question was something like this:

"Mr. X is running a marathon. His finishing time is 2 hours 56 minutes. A marathon is about 40.5km. What was his average speed?"

Very simple answer if you just go by the information you've got, however, the information given is incorrect. To get a precise calculation of his speed, you'd need an exact measurement of the distance, and "About 40.5km" isn't specific enough and completely wrong. So I once again told the teacher that I couldn't give a correct answer to the problem, nor could anyone else, since the basic information was incorrect. A marathon is 42km 195m, and those 195 meters will make a differece in the calculation. 16.228km/h as opposed to 15.576km/h, the latter being as the problem was listed in the test. Not a whole lot of difference, but still.

Once again, he didn't like me being a wise-ass, so he then told me to calculate the "correct" average speed and also the answer that was correct for the problem as it was presented.
it took me about 45 seconds to get both of them sorted, and he didn't like that either.