Tricky Questions!!!

davee123

Well, I guess I was assuming things that are too reasonable for the sake of the problem. You could admittedly just have his friend stand over the boiling water with 100 liters of 20C water ready to just dump in as soon as he puts his hands into the pot. Or whatever.

The thing that was more worrying to me was that I was assuming you were needing the water at 70+ degrees C (actually looks like that's less than true?), and according to the little chart there, the duration of time you can take contact with temperatures is asymptotic, so you'd only be able to withstand a small fraction of a second of contact with the water before being burned at 72C (which is what I assumed it'd be). And my guess is that if you're talking about your average pot-or-so of boiling water, and handfull-sized chunks of snow as suggested, skin contact with 70+ degree water would be more like 5 seconds rather than a fraction of a second. But at 65C instead (which looks like about what you might expect at Everest's peak?), you've got maybe 2-3 full seconds or so in which to play around with. Still kinda iffy, but I might buy it.

But yeah, I admit you can put some pretty outlandish caveats in there to make it possible if the "boiling water" only has to boil for an instant before becoming simply lukewarm.

DaveE

Jimmy Snyder

This sentence cannot be written down correctly.

What word is always spelled wrong?

davee123

How would you speak this such that it was correct? Or is this implying that the sentence is false, while grammatically correct?

DaveE

J77

Umm...

Spelt?

(DaveE: you forgot a comma in your grammatically correct reply )

Jimmy Snyder

Sometimes spelt is spelled correctly. My word is always spelled wrong.

J77

Is the word:

wrong

Jimmy Snyder

Wrong is right, even though two wrongs don't make a right, and three lefts do.

davee123

I did? Actually, now that I've looked at it again, I think I used one comma too many! I think I should've written:

"How would you speak this such that it was correct? Or is this implying that the sentence is false while grammatically correct?"

Where do you think I need an extra comma?

DaveE

J77

Between this and such, and between false and while - although I'm probably wrong.



(My use of English has been destroyed through writing in a scientific style.)

Schrodinger's Dog

Don't forget he's doing this in front of the judge so foul play would be detected, it's unlikely anyones going to care much if he puts his hands in the snow or secrets some snow. Everyone'll be assuming it's as hot as it is normally.

If his hands start of cooler than body temp and if he waits only a minute before putting his hands in it should actually already be much less than 72 degrees C(anyone know how quickly water at 72 degrees C would cool at say -10 degrees C, say it's a moderate sized mountain for the area: 20,000 feet?

Considering the atmosphere is very thin very cold and most probably way below zero, I'd say it's possible, even likely that it would work, the person who posed the question in the first place probably got the idea from a real life event. After all he must have known that this would work, the science of the time when the question was first posed would have been non-existent, so they probably would have put it down to all sorts of reasons. This is another question Aristotle was supposed to have asked the young Alexander. I transported it to India just because it sounds more mystical. Probably happened on Mt. Olympus? But considering the peoples the Greeks traded with it could of happened in India.

Jimmy Snyder

There is no period at the end of this sentence.

davee123

Heh, if the judge can change his mind about the whole thing, I'd wager he wouldn't stand for the guy dumping handfulls of snow in there!

Well, he can't wait to put his hands into the boiling water-- at least not the way it's worded. He has to put his hands into water that's boiling. How hot the water is *after* he puts his hands in isn't stipulated, although I'm sure the judge's assumption upon agreeing to the challenge is that the water would stay boiling for several minutes (which is why I think he probably wouldn't accept dumping snow in).

Not sure how quickly it would cool down though at extremely low outside temperatures. We'd need to know how much water there was, and what sort of container it was kept in (a metal pot would cool faster than, say, a ceramic one). Again, you can perform extra cheats that the judge wouldn't take kindly too-- like having an extremely small metal pot which you immediately set into the snow, cooling it faster.

Well, there's also other cheats that might make it possible, like plunging your hand (while clutching a snowball) into a very small pot, displacing the majority of the boiling water onto the ground, and replacing it with the snow, which speeds the cool-down process.

The thing that I'm thinking isn't possible without injury is:
- Pot has about a gallon-or-so of water in it
- Water in the pot is boiling (72+C)
- Man puts both hands in, holding fist-sized snowballs in each hand
- Nothing else is added to the pot
- No water is displaced when he puts his hands in
- Nobody puts the pot into snow (or whatnot) after he submerges

Maybe there's other things I should stipulate, too, I dunno.

There's also another important caveat to the problem. If it IS based in real events, who's to say what "injury" is? 1st degree burns aren't permanant. I could believe that he could handle the above situation and only manage a 1st degree burn-- provided that there's no heat source under the water keeping it boiling. And a 1st degree burn, while painful, isn't permanent. And again, if it IS based on a real event, it may be exaggerated. The deal may have been if they man could *tolerate* his hands being submerged in boiling water without removing them.

DaveE

Jimmy Snyder

I, finally ... figured. it! out?

Jimmy Snyder

Only one slice of 1.5 cm can be cut from a loaf which is 22.5 cm long.

This answer doesn't work so good because you can cut the bread without decreasing the length of it.

DaveC426913

This is actualy a really good one though it is not the one I was looking for.


That is what I was looking for.

"There are three ways to spell the word 'to'."

Easy to say...

Schrodinger's Dog

Well to be honest I may have misremembered some of the details but I think in essence unless you want to introduce all sots of odd scenarios it's possible.

The judge may well know he's put his hands in snow, but he wouldn't know how hot the water is nor that he'd picked up a handful of snow. He said he'd place his hands into boiling water, I supose I didn't specifically state, how long between boil time and his hands going in was.

Incidently Alexander solved it because he had once overheard some shepherds talking about the effect of altitude on boiling water. And he was a clever git as well. Bit of a child prodigy by all accounts.

The water isn't at 72 degrees C after the snow has gone in and after his freezing hands go in, nor is it at 72 when he puts his hands in anyway, water will cool much more quickly in sub zero temperatures and at altitude in a container that's probably metal and radiates heat quickly? He probably would have ended up with red hands but no serious burns, probably have been painful. Anyway it wasn't my quiestion go ask Aristotle.

davee123

Yeah, I kinda like Jimmy's approach with that one-- sentences which are false, but grammatically incorrect when true, or visa versa.

Isn't that just the same deal, though? IE, grammatically correct, but inaccurate? There really *aren't* 3 ways to spell the word "to" (in English, that is), but there are three distinct ways to spell "to", "two", and "too" respectively. Even then, there are words with more than one accepted spelling, like "color" vs. "colour", or "gray" vs. "grey".

I suppose you could argue that you could have something like:

"I am going two the store"

Which, when you spoke it, would *sound* correct, but actually be incorrect, since the interpretation would be "I am going to the store", which is correct, and possible to write down correctly. It's just that what you *actually* said or meant is NOT possible to write down correctly. But I dunno, that seems kinda like cheating to me...

DaveE