Mental Nuts-- Can You Crack 'em?

[glatt]

Originally Posted by footfootfoot

You can put a pig in a dinner jacket but it's still a pig.

You can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but a bird in the hand is worth a silk purse.

[infinite monkey]

It's not a story.

It's simple geometry.

[infinite monkey]

I knew dat. I had to double check mine to see that it matched yours. Wanted to make sure I'd said it right.

[classicman]

On probation? For what? Being correct? Ya Cock!

[jimhelm]

he's a German Purse



Deutch Bag

[infinite monkey]

No, again. It's GEOMETRY. NOT semantics.

You. Are. Wrong.

kthxbai :p

[BigV]

My new favorite obsession. It really is about geometry. When the puzzle says circle the tree, that's geometry. There's a plain unambiguous definition of a circle, likewise what is inside and what is outside the circle.

I'd love to understand the reasoning behind this different conclusion, really. I've heard lots of justifications, facing, semantics, parallel paths, ropes, turning, not turning, tree, etc etc. None of them stand up, or at least none have been convincing to me. I would like to be convinced, if it is really what you believe, that the squirrel has not been gone around. But nothing has done that yet.

Until then, the geometry of a circle, the semantic definition of a circle, remains the most convincing, truest answer.

[Lamplighter]

OK, V...

The hunter goes around a circle.
The circle has a center.
The center is a point.
A point has zero dimensions.

Ibso Santorum, the hunter goes around nothing.

[infinite monkey]

Parallel planes never intersect. Geometry.




What if you laid out the circumference of the path of the squirrel and the circumference of the path of the hunter into straight lines?

Parallel lines.

[BigV]

Originally Posted by infinite monkey

Parallel planes never intersect. Geometry.




What if you laid out the circumference of the path of the squirrel and the circumference of the path of the hunter into straight lines?

Parallel lines.

Parallel planes don't intersect, true. that's a geometrical fact. Ok, but it has nothing to do with circles. Maybe there's more there, but by itself, it's ... nothing.

circumference is the distance around something, usually a circle and that applies here. It's a distance. We don't know what either distance is for the squirrel or for the hunter, except because we know how a circumference is defined, we know that the circumference of the path of the hunter is greater than the circumference of the path of the squirrel, since the radius, the distance from the center to the edge, is greater for the hunter than for the squirrel. The radius in this mental nut is the center of the tree, the point about which each "goes around".

So, we have circumferences. One's bigger than the other. But distances are scalar values, they have a quantity only. They're not vector quantities which have direction. If you measure the distance around something, its circumference, it's a value, and it has that same value regardless of direction. Actually, direction is meaningless in the context of a circumference.

So, I'm still stuck, there's no such thing as a parallel circumference, even ones that have been unwound into straight line segments.

Please continue.

footfootfoot, if you can quench my thirst, I'd be much obliged. If you can't, just toss out another nut, willya?

[footfootfoot]

You can lead a horse to water...

And now for some more algebra, which some people find easier to understand:

[glatt]

If you change the problem so the hunter doesn't go around the squirrel, then I would agree that the hunter doesn't go around the squirrel. Until then...

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by footfootfoot

You can lead a horse to water...

And now for some more algebra, which some people find easier to understand:

Love the "per cent."- 1921, hah!


The hunter goes around the sqkewrll.

[HungLikeJesus]

What if the squirrel is above the hunter's head? Then the circles are even in different planes.

[BigV]

Originally Posted by HungLikeJesus

What if the squirrel is above the hunter's head? Then the circles are even in different planes.

I thought of this. I make a big circle here. A squirrel makes a smaller circle over there or down there. The planes could be parallel. In this case, I don't think that the hunter has gone around the squirrel.

But the graphic and the commonsense illustration seemed to give the impression that both the hunter and the squirrel were at about the same height above the ground, and thus, in the same plane.