Karnuvap

I think Modest has the best answer. Though the filtered sunlight question still requires the poor blind guy to have the foresight (sorry) to have obtained the 3-D glasses beforehand. Wouldn't it work without the filter. The blue pills absorb all light except Blue (which they reflect) and the red ones absorb all light except red (which they reflect). I am guessing that they will warm at different rates under white light and so no need for the filter or the lasers. Personally I think he should just take one pill and if he wakes up in Zion with Morpheus and Trinity he took the red one.

Some people have reported that standing on a ridge overlooking a valley where it is raining they have seen a rain-circle. It is to do with the geometry of the sun and the observer (you). In similar situations I have been in a plane and seen the shadow of the plane on some clouds below but the shadow is encircled by a bright ring of light. This is called a "Glory" and again it is to do with the symmetry of the sun being directly behind you and the sun's rays reflecting off ice crystals in the cloud this time. Hope this helps. The Vap.

Your question is the deepest one in Physics that I know and I have thought about it a lot myself. What you have to do to resolve this question is realise that the speed of a bean (I like to think of light as a series of little light beans too) of light represents the speed limit for INFORMATION to travel. So in the famous Bell's inequality experiment (look it up on wikipedia if you need to) you will realise that although it seems to show that something is travelling between the two points - you still cannot use it to transmit information faster than the speed of light - and thus Einstein's speed limit is preserved. Hope this helps. The Vap.

It is to do with the arrangement of the protons and neutrons in the nucleus. They just cannot seem to get comfy and are always wriggling around with the upshot being that one of the protons has to be ejected before the rest of them can settle down. In reality, a proton doesn't get ejected - instead a neutron spits out an electron thus increasing the number of protons by one which makes the arrangement a happier one for the remaining nucleons or a proton grabs hold of one of the low flying electrons thus neutralising itself into a neutron making one fewer proton and one more neutron which, I think we can all agree, is a much more convivial arrangement for a nucleus to have. There is just no easy way to arrange 43 protons together (no matter how many neutrons you let them have) and so something bad always happens. 42 protons = peace, 44 protons = harmony but 43 protons always arguments in the nuclear household. Hope this helps. The Vap.

There is a commonly held belief that loss of one sense leads to increased acuity of the other senses. I have recently read (somewhere) that this isn't really true. Doesn't help answer your question though. I would think that the reason for you thinking that your eyesight has improved is psychological - when you were muffled in the hearing department then everything must have seemed fuzzy and now that you have restored yourself to crystal clarity everything seems clearer. Just a thought. The Vap

Ahh yes - the eternal question of whether space is curved and, if so, what shape is it? I think that the current thinking is (based on the amount of matter that there is distorting space) that space IS curved and it is curved in what is geometrically called a "Saddle". This is otherwise known as the pringle shape which is to say that the angles of your triangle will add up to LESS than 180 degrees.

I have absolutely no idea. Here's one for you - What do they take to EVERY cup final but NEVER use? Karnuvap.

So All I've got to do is figure out a way to stay alive for the next couple of hundred years and then the universe is my oyster. Not sure I can wait that long. In the meantime, I wrote a story about FTL - it seems we just weren't pushing hard enough. Glimpses of Infinity Karnie

Hi Pamela, Missed you too. might be a CORSET but I am sure that they still make these in <shall we say> specialist shops. :hihi:

By the way, The answer to the broken weight problem was 1kg, 3kg, 9kg, and 27kg, Careful analysis will show that with a pair of scales and these weights you can establish any integer number of kgs of anything. e.g 25kg? put the 27kg and the 1kg on one side and the unknown weight and the 3kg on the other side - if they balance then you know that the unknown is 25kg. (both sides equal 28kg). The relationship between the fragments for this to work is increasing powers of three (three raised to the power of zero (1), three raised to the power of one (3), three squared (9) and three cubed(27)).

Hi Pamela, Are you a tie?

Sorry for late reply - no it doesn't it is a simple 1:1 balancing scale.

Hi there! The riddles thread is here: http://hypography.com/forums/watercooler/3934-riddles.html But I give up - which one is true? What do you mean by "order" - the order of what?? The Vap is confused. :shrug:

You are spot on; the second sentence should also read scales. Apologies for inaccuracy. It should be possible to solve it now. The Vap

Hi William, Sorry I wasn't having a go at you. I think your riddles are fun. OK - with 4 x 10kg weights how are you going to be able to weigh something that weighs 1 Kg.? So, either there are two of the weights that are 1Kg apart (as in my example in the question) or one of the pieces weighs 1 Kg. You first clue is one of the pieces weighs 1Kg. Karnie.

They drifted off because the challenges were either too obscure or (like this one) too obvious. Bring back medium scale genuine riddles, I say. Here's a puzzle (does that count?) I have a 40Kg weight and a pair of balancing scales. I drop the weight and it breaks into four pieces and I now find that I can use the pieces and the scale to weigh any whole number of Kgs from 1 to 40. How much does each piece weigh? Eg. if one piece weighs 15 kilos and another weighs 16 then I can weigh these amounts, of course, but by putting the 15 and what I want to weigh on one side of the scale and the 16 on the other side I can verify ONE kg . There is an interesting relationship between the weights of the four pieces too. Bonus points for that. The Vap.

Nah! - these days the smallest distance and the smallest time are the planck length and the planck time which are derived from the three fundamental constants c, h-bar and big G combined in a way that makes dimensions of length and time respectively. Planck length is 1.616x10 ^ -33 (sorry I haven't got the hang of the maths codes) Planck time is defined as how long it takes light to travel one planck length. (so there is bound to be a "c" relation there). The thing you have to remember about electrons is that they are infinite in extent (unless you measure one and then you might pin its position down but not its momentum) Until you measure it, the electron is everywhere (at once) - it just doesn't make sense to say let's measure one to see how big it is. I was about to say - 'hope this helps' but then I realised that it doesn't :naughty: The Vap.

Well, you could try to delve into String theory that says all particles are made of the same stuff but they are different vibration modes of that stuff. Even more intriguing is the realisation that a positron can be considered as an electron but going backwards through time. This raises the possibility that there is ONLY ONE ELECTRON in the whole universe and what we see at any given instant as lots of electrons is really this one electron reaching "NOW" via many oscillations from the beginning of time to the end of time thus explaining at a stroke why all electrons are identical (no electron has been found to weight a little tiny bit more than the accepted weight for example, I'm aware of the Pauli exclusion principle). I don't know about you but I am already boggled at this. KarnuVap.

Plus the point of the circuit is to dump all the charge from the Caps into the coil as quickly as possible. A simple switch would be inefficient at this as a lot of the energy would be lost in the arcing of a switch's contacts. The clue is in the name - this is a coil-gun - the massive pulse into the coil will create a magnetic field which (as it rises very rapidly) will induce an opposing magnetic field in the slug of iron which will cause the iron projectile to be ejected away from the coil at speed. Let us all know how you get on if you get this coil gun to work. The Vapinator.

They both weigh a Ton - please may I have some of your Gold? The Vap He was standing on the window cleaning platform and jumped INTO the building. The Vap Strikes again.

I am thinking of that Eagle that is the emblem of the USA. Sorry, I am not an American and so I don't know it's proper name. The Vap.

Not everyone. Just me and BuddyZen :) 'cos it's too hard:shrug:

OK - topical one (for us Northern Hemispherics at least) I have two identical coins, one in each hand and I drop them simultaneously into two buckets of water one is at 30 degrees C and the other at 30 degrees F. Which coin hits the bottom of the bucket first? Stop me if you've heard this one. Karnuvap