From: Miriam English (miriam@werple.net.au)
Date: Fri Feb 01 2002 - 17:11:21 MST
At 09:56 AM 02/02/2002, E. Shaun Russell wrote:
>Scerir wrote:
>
>>Imagine to be on a perfectly flat, perfectly frictionless surface,
>>such as ice, or oil covered marble. You want to get away, but
>>nobody is around. So the question is: How can you move away
>>on perfect ice, i.e. on a perfectly frictionless surface?
>
>Hmm...I'm surprised no one said: take off a large article of clothing
>(such as a jacket, shirt etc.), place it on the surface, walk on it for a
>step or two, pick it back up and do it again until you are free. (Of
>course, no one knows if there *is* an end to the frictionless surface...it
>may just be an exercise in futility...)
Well, if the surface is perfectly flat and frictionless then you will just
move the clothing one way and yourself the other, then when you pick up the
clothing and move it in front of you again you will move yourself back to
your starting point. Nothing gained. Your mistake was in getting mixed up
between theoretical ice and real ice. :-)
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To the optimist, the glass is half full.
To the pessimist, the glass is half empty.
To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
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http://werple.net.au/~miriam
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