Downstream Drifters

If liquids are of no interest to you, and neither is the stuff floating on them, then perhaps you’d like to sink your fangs into the following. Air, we all know, is a gas.

E4

Here’s one that the anti-math mafia or the pro-lit proletariat can’t do anything about. In fact, they’ll both have to think twice about it. Even on second thoughts. It’s about an extre-mely obvious thingy that suddenly goes haywire and your mind then does one of those rare uninitiated Twilight Zone flips. So without any further ado consider, for instance, a drifting boat on a flowing river, stream or whatever. You know, the type that was, till the coming of this sentence, being perfectly propelled forwards due to the sweat of an outboard motor and a woman on board steering the rudder on it before it went and ran clean out of gas.

That’s what I said, and now it’s drifting; just being pushed along by the stream. Yet, you know what? The rudder still works. Which is just another way of saying that it can still be steered. Yup, you heard right — a drifting boat can be steered. However, the catch is, only a boat moving faster than the current of the stream it’s on can be steered. Yet how can something that’s being pushed along be moving faster than what’s pushing it?

However, if liquids are of no interest to you, and neither is the stuff floating on them, then perhaps you’d like to sink your fangs into the following. Air, we all know, is a gas. And this, a lot of us also know, means that its atoms and molecules are not in such close proximity to each other as in a solid or liquid. So why don’t air molecules just fall to the ground?

DEAR MS

(The problem was, would a stationary standing bicycle go backwards or forwards if a twine attached to one of its pedals was pulled backwards? — MS)

Re-Cycled-Dept:

When the twine tied to the pedal is pulled backwards, the bicycle too starts to move backward. This is &because we are pulling the bicycle back and the pedal is attached to the bicycle. So even if you pull the twine back, the pedal rotates counter-clockwise; pulling the bicycle back.

•Saifuddin S F Khomosi, saif_sfk@hotmail.com

(Not quite. Perform the same thought experiment with a suspended cycle and guess what happens when the twine is pulled? The back wheel turns for the cycle to move forwards. So why not on the ground too? — MS)

(The other problem was: “A cylindrical hole, six inches long, has been drilled through the centre of a solid sphere. What is the volume remaining in the sphere? — MS)

Pi-In-The-Sky-Dept:

The problem must have a unique solution, so it must be &independent of the diameter of the hole. So if the diameter of the hole shrinks to zero, the remaining volume must be the volume of the sphere with six inches diameter: i.e., 36 pi, which is the solution.

•A V Ramana Rao, raoavr@gmail.com

 (And finally: “A water plant divides daily into two. If, one plant takes 30 days to cover a certain area, how long will two plants take?”)

What-A-Plant-Dept:

The answer is 29 days. When there is only one plant, it takes 29 days to cover half the area. If there are two such plants, each will take 29 days to cover one-half of the area, resulting in the coverage of the whole area that only one plant covers in 30 days. — Ibrar -ul-Samad, vjibi_94@hotmail.com (Yes, Mukul Goray, goraymukul@gmail.com, Dhurjati Sen, dhurjatidhurjati@gmail.com and Sheikh Sintha Mathar, sheikhsm7@gmail.com, you were among the early birds too. — MS)

ENDGAME(S)

1.  Two guys order two drinks which, unknown to them, is laced with identical amounts of poison. One gulps his down and lives; the other sips his slowly and dies. What could be the reason?

2.  The letters of each of the following words can be rearranged to give the name of an animal. (1) Corona; (2) Cabaret; (3) Paroled; (4) Retirer; (5) Lesions; (6) Someday; (7) Chained; (8) Untrace; (9) Alpines; (10) Outhears; (11) Orchestra; (12) Californian.

(To get in touch with Mukul, mail him at mukul.mindsport@gmail.com)

• Mindsport