2 questions.
1. If a man in a space ship called earth and said I am one light year away, I will be there in 3 earth years, approximately what percentage of the speed of light would he have to travel to reach earth in 3 earth years?
2. As we are all aware we measure movement in three dimensional space on the x y z axis, knowing that this is how movement through space is measured can we truly predict an impact with a heavenly body into the earth and leave time to react to the impending disaster?
As you all know Brian never knew his pa.
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Since writing this post Jade may have helped people, but has not within the last 4 days. Jade is a verified member, has been around for 1 year, 3 months and has 20 posts and 1,226 replies to their name.
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Where were you?
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Jade invited 28 users to read this post 7 months, 1 week ago.
OK… I heard of the game, “Are you smarter than a 5th Grader”… but what is this? “Are you smarter than an Astro-physicist?”
Sorry… dumb as a post here… Now tell the truth Jade…. Your 12 year old daughter brought these questions home to YOU! Did you get ‘em right? ;)
Bright blessings ~ Richard
1. 33.3%
2.In a mechanical, Newtonian universe, not a problem. You know enough variables, you can predict the outcome; but quantum physics blows that out of the water.
What class is this for?
pffft, everyone knows the answer to all these type of questions is 72;)
re tar tard sauce wrote:
pffft, everyone knows the answer to all these type of questions is 72;)
I thought it was 42 (yes I am a Douglas Adams fan)
Daro got one right..sorta. the second, fail.
mechanical, relatavistic, or quantum, we simply would not aquire enough info about the object until it was too late to do anything to prevent impact.
Jade’s daughter did answer both these questions, answer 1. 1/3 answer 2. no
now, that was fun, as i told Jade that if we got an answer, the person would try to make it sound more complicated, and add qualitfiers that simply were not present in the question.
but thanks for putting thought into it.
(p.s. the reason i said sorta right on #1: 33.333% or 33.334% are recognized as implying the .3 to infinity. or, as the 12 year old so wonderfully said it, with no ambiguity, 1/3.)
LOL Rich and all others who assumed this was a school question my daughter brought home. Actually Brian came up with these questions and we decided to ask my 12 year old who in a very short matter of time was able to come up with the simple answers.
(ps…I could not answer them and as Brian was explaining the answers to me on the phone my daughter was figuring the answers out next to me on paper..she was two steps ahead of what he was saying. I was completely amazed that her mind was able to focus on the simple vs making it complicated which was what I was doing.)
I’ll come back (at work now).
Hrm… 33%…
It is not that simple. It depends on who is measuring the time. It is good if he does, because the earth will not know it until an earth year later, i.e. when his call reaches them. So when THEY know about his coming, HE has two earth years left to travel.
His phone call travels with approximately (space has not absolute vacuum, and the light speed is approximate) the speed as shown below (shown between the earth and the moon), for one year (his measure), before they hear it. He travels with a third of that (still his measure), or with 223,538,876.4 MPH

Just a simplification of the question, of course… hehe…
Question 2)
As Daro says, no problem if you know enough variables. And that includes Quantum Physics.
With that in mind, for the prediction and if the object has a comparatively low speed, yes. We also have to keep in mind that the information we get from space is old information. From very far away, very old info.
Then it depends on what you mean “leave time for a reaction” … what reaction? Like “Oops?
question 1. never said how or when he called earth.
but she did ask for an approximate answer. Truly, to be fair , you added assumptions to the question.
question 2. from our vantage point, how many variables can we know? and what variables would help?
Just saying Variables, do not answer the question..
and , friend, I hate being misquoted, and say specifically what i mean.
not “leave time for a reaction” but, “leave time to react to the impending disaster”
there is no need to add stress and complication here..hehe.
a 12 year old kid, just took an intutive leap, and her answers still feel more genuine to me. The point of this one (thanks Jade) was to show how many of us will try to “amp it up”, so to speak, so that it is hard to dispute the answers…and often, people will just sit back and say “Lordy, he sure SOUNDS smart, he must be right”
No offensive intended, but, really, maybe THIS is the reason our world is so hard to understand for most people..we make it too complicated..
I ask you, “you want a beer?” how many ways can you come up with to answer that? and Why?
Hehe, Brian. We are playing on the same side of the court!
I complicated it on purpose.
That is why I wrote “Just a simplification of the question, of course… hehe…”
By the way, I didn’t know that I misquoted you. I thought I misquoted Jade…
We had a similar case here, when the National Traffic Board came on TV, stating that “if two cars collide with eachother heads-on, from opposite directions, each driving in 55 mph, the impact is like driving into a solid mountain wall in 110 mph!”
So there was this little kid, simply saying “no”. He had a Physics teacher who tried to correct him. But he was persistent and convinced the Physics teacher to forward the question to other Physics guys… The matter caused a very intense debate between professors and God-knows-who. They brought very advanced Physics and Math into it, but it all ended with the National Traffic Board issuing a statement that they had been wrong.
The funny thing was that while the professors were slugging with their advanced formulas, the boy prooved his case with a piece of toilet paper! And once again in another way, with a mirror! And it was easily understood!
For each of the cars, it is like driving into a wall in 55 mph.
An Undisclosed Location | 7 months, 1 week ago (17 hours, 7 minutes after post)
1) 100%
2) yes
:-P
~[ Ă… BrianDH wrote:
~]Daro got one right..sorta. the second, fail.mechanical, relatavistic, or quantum, we simply would not aquire enough info about the object until it was too late to do anything to prevent impact.
Jade’s daughter did answer both these questions, answer 1. 1/3 answer 2. no
now, that was fun, as i told Jade that if we got an answer, the person would try to make it sound more complicated, and add qualitfiers that simply were not present in the question.
but thanks for putting thought into it.
(p.s. the reason i said sorta right on #1: 33.333% or 33.334% are recognized as implying the .3 to infinity. or, as the 12 year old so wonderfully said it, with no ambiguity, 1/3.)
1.I would have used the bar over the last 3 to indicate run-on as I usually do, but I can’t do that at help.com.
2.That’s why I asked what class this was for. The answer varies depending on what class/subject/set of assumptions you are in. I’ve taken three different classes in uni, that have different responses to this and other similair questions. So I just gave the simplest answer I could.
molotok wrote:
Hehe, Brian. We are playing on the same side of the court!
I complicated it on purpose.
That is why I wrote “Just a simplification of the question, of course… hehe…”By the way, I didn’t know that I misquoted you. I thought I misquoted Jade.
Ummmm Molotok…I am offended! It would appear you thought it ok to misquote me but not Brian…it’s not ok to misquote at all!! ******, man - you sure know how to hurt a girl’s feelings!
Hehe, Jade…
I did complicate the matter on purpose, but the quote was purely accidental. That part is a language thing, I guess I don’t even understand the expession “leave time to react to the impending disaster”, because I still don’t see the difference (except grammatically) from to “leave time for a reaction”.
Lol, now THIS thing is getting complicated… how will I get out of this, without bruises…?
An Undisclosed Location | 7 months, 1 week ago (1 day, 14 hours after post)
I think flowers are called for Molotok :-P
Richie, I don’t need flowers. I have some already. *whistles*
Oh? You mean “I think flowers are called for, Molotok”.
(Note the slight difference, talking about making things complicated…)
But you are right.
Jade, please accept my apologies!
awwww… apology accepted!!!!
An Undisclosed Location | 7 months, 1 week ago (1 day, 18 hours after post)
lol… God’s joke fruit.
Jade closed this post.
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