Math riddle
- From: "Beady-El" <Beady.El@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 26 Jan 2007 17:12:51 -0800
A buddy and I were pondering this "riddle" today. I dreamed it up, but
our combined expertise was not enough to crack it, though we both had a
good deal of college-level math. I have a gut feeling that there is a
solution that goes no farther than Algebra & Trigonometery - not
requiring calculus - but I may be wrong.
Suppose you are walking on a perfecly flat plane.
You drive a stake into the ground and attach a 50 mile rope to it.
You walk 50 miles, until the rope is taut.
Then you walk a circle around the stake, keeping the rope taut.
The distance you will walk - discounting the imprecision of a human
walking, and the sag introduced by the rope's weight - will be 100 * pi
miles.
Ok? Now part 2:
Suppose you are walking on the surface of a sphere (as we more-or-less
are).
You drive a stake into the ground and attach a 50 mile rope to it.
You walk 50 miles until the rope is taut.
Then you walk a circle around the stake, keeping the rope taut.
The distance you walk will be less than 100*pi miles, because of the
curvature of the sphere's surface. The 50 mile radius is not a
straight line, it's curved, and thus you are actually less than 50
linear miles from the stake.
NOW, HERE'S THE QUESTION:
Assuming perfect measurements, and using only your radius , your
measured circumference and the constant pi, can you compute the size
of the sphere you are walking on?
If anyone can think of a solution, I'd love to hear it.
.
- Follow-Ups:
- Re: Math riddle
- From: David W . Cantrell
- Re: Math riddle
- From: mathmanjc
- Re: Math riddle
- From: Virgil
- Re: Math riddle
- From: [Mr.] Lynn Kurtz
- Re: Math riddle
- From: matt271829-news
- Re: Math riddle
- From: drmwecker
- Re: Math riddle
- Prev by Date: Re: A card game probability
- Next by Date: Re: Books on Algebraic Plane Curves
- Previous by thread: Books on Algebraic Plane Curves
- Next by thread: Re: Math riddle
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|