Sunday, February 22, 2009

Lost in the forest

Here is puzzle I heard on some radio or podcast show:

You are in the forest. Two trees are marked in some way. You are given rope which length is twice the distance between marked trees. The task is to find third tree that forms right triangle (triangle that has one angle of 90 degree).

There are few possible solutions here.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Relativity

Here is interesting question, while it's simple for people familiar with theory of relativity, imagining the followed experiment can be an eye openinig experience,

Imagine following device, the laser pointed straight up with a mirror mounted some distance above it that bounces light back to the laser where receptive is attached sensor. Knowing distance of round trip and time between sending light impulse and receiving it we can verify speed of light. Now lets place that device on very fast moving train. For the observer on the train nothing changes same data, same result. However for observer on the ground light now travels along zigzag or two sides of triangle covering more distance then in stationary case. Given that speed of light is the same in both cases, how is that possible?

Saturday, February 7, 2009

Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences

The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences is free searchable library of various integer sequences. While site is mostly dry and blant from UI point of view, it’s content that is most fastinating. You can search for various sequences and results can be represented as graphs or sounds and include links to relevant literature. Seraching for numbers from previous quiz will reveal the sequence

(I normally do not give away answers unless there is a post solving the puzzle. But in thi particular case the gIven sequence in the previous post is very hard to solve, still you can try solving it yourself and then look it up in encyclopedia).