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        riddles >> easy >> What's up with this horse?
        
(Message started by: BenVitale on Jun 14^th, 2009, 12:45pm)

Title: What's up with this horse?
Post by BenVitale on Jun 14^th, 2009, 12:45pm

A horse travels a certain distance each day. Strangely enough, two of its legs travel 30 miles each day and the other two legs travel nearly 31 miles. It would seem that two of the horses's legs must be one mile ahead of the other two legs, but of course this can't be true. Since the horse is normal, how is this situation possible?

Title: Re: What's up with this horse?
Post by Grimbal on Jun 14^th, 2009, 2:14pm

[hide]In a carousel?[/hide]

Title: Re: What's up with this horse?
Post by BenVitale on Jun 15^th, 2009, 2:01am

on 06/14/09 at 14:14:17, Grimbal wrote:

[hide]In a carousel?[/hide]

That should work! Or, the horse operates a mill and travels in a circular clockwise direction. The two outside legs will travel a greater distance than the two inside legs.

Title: Re: What's up with this horse?
Post by Grimbal on Jun 15^th, 2009, 2:37am

The fun starts when the horse is racing at speeds near the speed of light. Then half of the horse ends up much younger than the other half.

Then imagine the horse is carrying a clock. Half of the clock woud display a different time than the other half.

Title: Re: What's up with this horse?
Post by towr on Jun 15^th, 2009, 4:56am

on 06/15/09 at 02:37:42, Grimbal wrote:

The fun starts when the horse is racing at speeds near the speed of light. Then half of the horse ends up much younger than the other half.

The difference in centrifugal force would probably make the horse 'explode' before this becomes an issue.
a = v²^/r
r ~= 30 time the horse's width, say r=15 m
v ~= c
a ~= 6 * 10 ¹⁴ g
The difference between its two sides is in the order of a tenth of this.

Title: Re: What's up with this horse?
Post by BenVitale on Jun 15^th, 2009, 10:47am

Imagine one of you is the conductor moving on that carousel, from horse to horse, collecting tickets. You'll have to deal with 2 forces: centrifugal force and the Coriolis force.

Title: Re: What's up with this horse?
Post by chronodekar on Jun 25^th, 2009, 4:25am

This *might* be off but,

a horse gallops, right? i.e. all 4 legs do NOT stay on the ground. It kinda jumps. So perhaps it's the front 2 legs that traveled more?

Admittedly, the merry-go-round solution mentioned earlier makes much better sense.

-chronodekar