Now morning and reflecting more on surface tension, floating etc, did you know I can ride a bicycle on water and can even lean way over in fast cornering to about 10 degrees off horizontal without skidding. But even so, I could not keep up with a woman Olympic swimmer who was going really quickly in the same direction like a swan - no surface evidence of propulsion necessary. It turned out to be just a dream, real though it seemed at the time. Reality is a slippery thing - the more we hunt it down, the more it acts like a will o the wisp. Elon Musk thinks we are almost certainly not in base reality, whatever that means. I'll leave it to Freudians to interpret that lot.
I think I'm awake now and have a maths puzzle for Ai Li.
Can she add up 0 to 10 in under 1 minute?
How long for 0 to 100?
Just for fun, how long for 0 to 1000?
I like to tell that one to children who are partial to maths and suggest they challenge their teachers/parents after I explain to them how to do it easily, without the labour, which is the way everything should be done, though sometimes arduous is just how things are.
Thinking a bit more, our son Tarken who ceased to be, by so-called choice, at the end of 20 years which I would have doubted exceedingly if told the future back in 1995, attended Antwerp International School back in the late 1980s [as we lived there]. Johns Hopkins university ran an international talent search for 12 year olds. Teachers would nominate pupils by various scholastic measures then the students able to and wishing to participate would sit the Scholastic Aptitude Test [SAT] and if accepted by Johns Hopkins could then enrol in the Johns Hopkins programme or program as they spell it. Unfortunately, we had decided to return to NZ so although Tarken would easily have got in based on his SAT result, it all got too hard for us so he did not go. Now of course I wish he had attended - anything to change the outcome of his life.
Out of curiosity, I had a look and hey presto, Johns Hopkins is still doing it. Erita might well be up to it since she can presumably solve those problems you gave. cty.jhu.edu She might have the interest too, rubbing shoulders with peers from around the world.
But I have no idea whether that's a good thing or not because predicting the future is problematic at best, even after just 20 years. Seeing how life changed AFTER the event is much easier and enlightening.
Quantum physics is apparently correct - all wave functions are possible until the Schrodinger cat observer chooses to observe to see whether the cat observes him. But if the probability of the observer choosing is 1, it's not really a choice they are making so the future that comes to be was causal despite the supposed random "bubbling" of the void [which begs the question of what "bubbling" is].
Perhaps Erita can figure that stuff out and provide enlightenment to the question, does God play dice?
Or maybe Jack will solve the problem while figuring out how to convert iron, mercury or lead into gold with a proton adjustment. 3 x Fe + 1 proton = gold. Or, 3 x Fe = platinum which is pretty good too.
1 x Hg - 1 proton = gold [if accidentally taking out 2 that would give platinum so no worry there]
1 x Pb - 3 protons = gold and lead is nice and cheap but three is presumably more tricky than 1 removal.
Since the end state of nuclear reactions in stars is iron, I guess it's easier to take out a proton or three than slip 3 iron nuclei together. Just add a negatively charged proton and the job should be done with lots of energy put out to be recycled back to making more antiprotons: en.wikipedia.org
That should be much easier than digging up thousands of tons of rock. "Just add" does seem simple. Getting the anti-proton is no doubt the hard part. But like adding 0 to 100, there's the hard way and probably an easy way.
Mqurice |
