Mind-Bending Puzzles

The drawer is entirely filled with socks, so let’s say 2 or 3 hundred. It’s just a pile of mixed up socks. But there are only two colors: red and blue.
 
and you know... gnarly dorkette... gnarly, under dictionary.com is defined as:

gnarly

/nar'lee/ adj. Both obscure and hairy (sense 1).
"Yow! -- the tuned assembler implementation of BitBlt is really
gnarly!" From a similar but less specific usage in surfer slang.


hmm... wonder what that means
 
Levonian said:
You are picking socks out of a drawer in complete darkness. The socks are unfolded and randomly mixed up in the drawer. All the socks are either red or blue. What is the least number of socks you can pull out that will guarantee that you have a matching pair?
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My answer:

3 socks
 
Levonian said:
Prove it.
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Okay, since there are only two colors... taking out only two would either get you:

2 red
2 blue
1 red & 1 blue

Since the 3rd possibility is 1 red & 1 blue, it's not a guarantee that you would get 2 of the same color. However, taking out 3 would get you:

3 blue
3 red
2 blue & 1 red
2 red & 1 blue

Since all possibilities results in a pair, it's a guarantee.
 
100% Keeerect! When you pull out the second sock, you either have a pair, or a mismatched pair. The third sock has to match one of the other two, resulting in a pair. That one was pretty easy. It was from a children’s puzzle book that I read in elementary school. OK, give me awhile and I’ll come up with a harder one. I’m going to try to think of one that’s not on the Internet. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.
 
Levonian said:
100% Keeerect! When you pull out the second sock, you either have a pair, or a mismatched pair. The third sock has to match one of the other two, resulting in a pair. That one was pretty easy. It was from a children’s puzzle book that I read in elementary school. OK, give me awhile and I’ll come up with a harder one. I’m going to try to think of one that’s not on the Internet. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.
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You mean the puzzle you found was on the internet? Aww... come on! Give me something tough! Give me something that will give me an headache!
 
OK—I thought of a good one. I’m going to give it a twist. This is not really a puzzle. You just have to figure out why something is true.

Many people believe that if you travel faster than the speed of light, that you would go backwards in time. This isn’t really true. Einstein never said that. It’s just a popular misconception. All Einstein ever said was that if an object was moving towards you at a velocity greater than the speed of light, it would appear to be moving away from you. Why is this?

Hint: The answer is really very simple once you can visualize it in your head. It can easily be demonstrated here on Earth with sound waves.
 
No, that has nothing to do with it. If you are standing still and a car is coming towards you at less than light speed, you see it coming towards you. But if the car suddenly accelerated to a speed greater than the speed of light, it would still be coming towards you, but you would see it moving away. I’ll give you another hint: you don’t see something happen until the light from the event reaches you. It takes light 3 minutes to get from here to Mars. If you were looking at Mars and the planet exploded, you wouldn’t see it until 3 minutes after it happened.
 
Levonian said:
No, that has nothing to do with it. If you are standing still and a car is coming towards you at less than light speed, you see it coming towards you. But if the car suddenly accelerated to a speed greater than the speed of light, it would still be coming towards you, but you would see it moving away. I’ll give you another hint: you don’t see something happen until the light from the event reaches you. It takes light 3 minutes to get from here to Mars. If you were looking at Mars and the planet exploded, you wouldn’t see it until 3 minutes after it happened.
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Yep! If you were looking out in space and saw Mars, it's not really in that location. It's actually 3 minutes away from its previous location.
 
compLicaTed said:
and you know... gnarly dorkette... gnarly, under dictionary.com is defined as:

gnarly

/nar'lee/ adj. Both obscure and hairy (sense 1).
"Yow! -- the tuned assembler implementation of BitBlt is really
gnarly!" From a similar but less specific usage in surfer slang.


hmm... wonder what that means
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....and your point is? you don't like my nickname? Too bad. :roll:
basically i am trying to say that I am one big dorkette... since surfers tend to call 7ft waves or taller "gnarly" because it is gigantic and risky... therefore, it could be interperted that I am one gigantic (in height and/or weight) and risky/bitchy dorkette. Hmmph?

btw- are you Jordanna or something and friends with Scott M.? Your avatar looks familiar.
 
gnarlydorkette said:
....and your point is? you don't like my nickname? Too bad. :roll:
basically i am trying to say that I am one big dorkette... since surfers tend to call 7ft waves or taller "gnarly" because it is gigantic and risky... therefore, it could be interperted that I am one gigantic (in height and/or weight) and risky/bitchy dorkette. Hmmph?

btw- are you Jordanna or something and friends with Scott M.? Your avatar looks familiar.
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No, she's not Jordanna... unless you're referring to a different Jordanna that I know.
 
Here are the numbers:

the speed of light = 299 792 458 m / s
the speed of sound at sea level = 340.29 m / s

So what are you trying to prove?
 
You’re right—those are the exact figures. But the actual speed at which these wave forms are traveling has no relation to this effect. The effect can be demonstrated with any type of wave form, traveling at any speed. I’ll give you one more clue, then I’ll post the answer and let this thread die in peace. The reason that an object moving at a speed greater than the speed of light appears to be moving backwards is the same reason that passengers on board the Concorde can’t hear the engines.
 
Well if that thing travels faster than the speed of light I guess that thing can escape gravity more. I give up. :dunno:
 
Levonian said:
You’re right—those are the exact figures. But the actual speed at which these wave forms are traveling has no relation to this effect. The effect can be demonstrated with any type of wave form, traveling at any speed. I’ll give you one more clue, then I’ll post the answer and let this thread die in peace. The reason that an object moving at a speed greater than the speed of light appears to be moving backwards is the same reason that passengers on board the Concorde can’t hear the engines.
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Sorry I didn't reply sooner...

The visibility of the person/object is also the visibility of light. If you move faster than the speed of light, you are moving faster than the visibility of the person/object... therefore, that person/object seems to move away from you.

This applies the same for sound. If you're flying a jet faster than the speed of sound, it becomes "silent" since all the sound you created is now behind you.
 
VamPyroX said:
If you're flying a jet faster than the speed of sound, it becomes "silent" since all the sound you created is now behind you.
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Yep—you got it. The last sentence of your reply is the key to the explanation. The passengers on the Concorde can’t hear the engines because the vehicle is traveling faster than the speed of sound. The Concorde is leaving it’s own sound behind it, and the noise from the engines can‘t catch up to the airplane. The same thing would happen with light, as Einstein pointed out. The easiest way to picture this is with a spaceship which emits pulses of light. Pretend you are looking out into deep space with a telescope. A spaceship is approaching you at a speed less than the speed of light. The spaceship emits 3 pulses of light at one minute intervals. We’ll call them pulse 1, pulse 2, and pulse 3. First, you see pulse 1. A minute later, you see pulse 2. Pulse 2 is larger and brighter than pulse 1 because the spaceship is closer to you—just like the headlights of an approaching car get larger and brighter as the car moves closer to you. A minute later, you see pulse 3, and it is larger and brighter than pulse 2. But if the spaceship is traveling faster than the speed of light, you will see the pulses in reverse order. After the spaceship emits pulse 1, it moves ahead of the pulse, leaving the pulse behind it. When it emits pulse 2, it moves ahead of it also. Pulse 1 is now behind pulse 2. When the spaceship emits pulse 3, the same thing happens, and now pulse 3 is in front, pulse 2 is behind it, and pulse 1 is behind pulse 2. So you will see pulse 3 first, then pulse 2, and then pulse 1. Just as the Concorde is leaving it’s own sound behind it, the spaceship is leaving it’s own light behind it.

Well, does anybody want more, or should we give this thread a rest?
 
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