A lovely simple but surprising mathematical problem this week (via Timothy M) …
Imagine you have a piece of string long enough to stretch around the earth (40,074 km or 4,007,400,000 cm). Then you take an extra meter of string and add it to the string around the Earth. Now you spread this extra string around the Earth, supporting it somehow, so that the string forms a circle off the ground.
How high off the ground would the string be?
As ever, please feel free to say if you think you have solved it, and how long it took, but please do not post your answer. Solution on Monday. Oh, and for an extra 10 points, what is the surprising aspect about the answer?
Again, thanks to everyone buying Telepath and sending such nice feedback to us and on the app store – please keep it coming! Also, there were some great new commandments yesterday – I will make up the top ten next week so, again, keep them coming.
I ran across this clip of the children’s TV show Rainbow today and it really made me chuckle. Apparently it was filmed as a private joke for the crew, but somehow made it onto You Tube….
So, my questions are….do you find it funny? And, why?
A huge thank you to everyone who downloaded and helped publicize Telepath yesterday. The feedback has been great, and please feel free to post a video of you performing it on YouTube.
Today’s post is all about the 10 commandments. It seems to me that they are a tad out of date, especially in a technology-based society where so many people don’t believe in god. So, can we come up with some better ones? Here are the originals (I know there are different versions, but these are the best known)….
1): ‘Thou shall have no other gods other than me.‘
2): ‘Thou shall not make for yourself a carved image of me.‘
3): ‘Thow shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.‘
4): ‘Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.‘
5): ‘Thou shalt honor your father and your mother.‘
6): ‘Thou shall not murder.‘
7): ‘Thou shall not commit adultery.‘
8): ‘Thou shall not steal.‘
9): ‘Thou shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.‘
10) : ‘Thou shall not covet your neighbor’s house; nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.‘
So, it might be something more relevant to people’s lives today (‘Thou shalt not believe everything you read on Wikipedia’, ‘Thou shalt not covet your neighbor’s iphone’), very specific (‘Contestants on the X-Factor shalt not murder anything by REM’), atheist or skeptical (“Thou shalt not have any gods, including me”), or realistic (‘Thou shalt not commit adultery more than four times a year”).
Anyway, post as many or few as you like, and I will choose the best ones next week and announce the new list of 10 commandments for the 21st Century.
“Finally someone has released a rather fantastic mind reading app that genuinely triggers that “wow – how did you do that?” response.” Derren Brown Blog.
Ever wanted to read a person’s mind? Well, now you can with Telepath, the new mind-reading iphone app that the wonderful Sarah Angliss and I are releasing today. The idea is simple. Someone thinks of a number or image, and mentally sends their thoughts to the iphone. They then turn over the iphone and are astounded to discover their thoughts on the screen. Here is Telepath in action….
I hope you like it. As we say in the video, Telepath can also be used on dates, so can even improve your love life. Feel free to guess how it might work or, if you buy it, let others know what you think (but no giving away the actual method!).
Telepath has been months in development and we are very proud of it. Hope that you like it too.
Download directly onto your iphone or itouch, or visit the Apps Store.
Update: Telepath does not use voice recognition, nor are there any hidden extra devices! Also, it will work on the 2nd generation itouch, but not the 1st generation itouch.
Update 2: The nice people over at Derren Brown Blog have had the great idea of having people film themselves performing Telepath and uploading the video onto You Tube. If you do film one, let me know!
Congratulations to Clementine for winning the caption contest yesterday – drop me an email and I will make sure that a signed copy of 59 seconds arrives safe and sound.
Onto the Friday puzzle….. and this week it is another lovely one from Mike……Imagine that you live on the moon. One day you see a number 14 bus. What is the most likely number of bus routes on the moon?
Update: This puzzle seems to have confused people – but it is a straight probability puzzle.
As ever, please do not post your solution, but feel free to say if you think you have solved it and how long it took. Answer on Monday and hopefully some very exciting news next week!
To generate your own bus slogans, visit here (and thanks to @FleaCircusDir for sending it to me)
Yesterday’s post generated lots of traffic and captions. To put everyone out of their misery, here is how the illusion was achieved (again, thanks to @wildbunny)….
But what about the best caption? Well, I have chosen my favourite ones, and put them into the poll below. It would be great if everyone could cast a vote for the one they like best, and the winner will get a signed copy of 59 seconds.
Feel free to keep the captions coming. Also, did you get the correct solution yesterday?
Any ideas about how the picture was created? Will post the answer later today.Also, a signed copy of 59 Seconds goes to the person who comes up with the best caption!
A couple of things. First, the dates for the US tour for 59 Seconds have now been confirmed…
Jan 5 & 6–New York
Jan 7–DC
Jan 8–Boston
Jan 9 & 10–Vegas
Jan 11–Seattle
Jan 12– San Francisco
Jan 13–Los Angeles
More details as I get them. Second, there is something of a 3D revival going on at the moment (including several horror films and a great magic special on C4 last night), so I thought it would be good to introduce The Pulfrich Effect. For most 3D effects you need to make a special film and have people watch it with odd glasses. However, it is possible to get the same effect on ‘normal’ footage. All you need to do is have someone cover one eye with something that darkens the image (e.g., sunglasses or one lens of 3D glasses) and view a scene with lateral movement. Interestingly, the effect does not work for everyone, but give it a go with the following clip (kindly sent to me by Chris Lawrence)…..
According to Chris, the effect works well with football games – meaning you can turn a 2D game into 3D.
I am rather excited today because I am going to be interviewed by Sir David Frost!
However, the good news is that my excitement has not caused me to forget about the Friday puzzle…
Imagine that you had a piece of paper, 0.1mm thick, that could be folded in half as many times as you like. How many times would you need to fold the paper before it was thick enough to reach the Moon?
As ever, feel free to leave comments saying if you think you solved it and how long it took, but please don’t post your solution. I have also given a list of possible answers below – please vote for the one that you believe is closest to the correct figure.
On Twitter, I promised that I would post a video of a talking rabbit once I reached 13,000 followers. Well, the target was reached last night and, being a man of my word, the promised video is here.
Hope you enjoy it – it was sent to me by my talented sword-swallowing and skeptical friend, Thomas Blackthorne. Here is a video of Thomas setting a world record by swallowing a moving jackhammer…..
Some recent research suggests that the earliest memories of men and women are associated with different ages. In the spirit of scientific inquiry, I thought it would be interesting to explore this idea. So, in the comments box, please say whether you are male or female, give a very brief description of your earliest memory and say how old you were when this event happened (obviously, if the memory is especially traumatic then feel free to skip the exercise). Let’s see whether the earliest memories of men and women really are so different….
Well, here I am in Bristol airport waiting for a flight that been very badly delayed. I thought I would pass the time by thinking of an idea.
So…..my understanding is that the 2012 London Olympics are a tad short of money and thus it would be good to come up with a fund raising initiative.
Here is my idea. How about we have a huge international lottery – everyone pays £1 to enter and the winner gets to run in the 100m final with the proper athletes!
Just imagine it – you would have a chance to make history, and be famous for the rest of your life. And it would show how great the actual runners are by have a normal person run alongside. Plus the TV rights would be worth a fortune.
So, what do you think? Any better ideas? Should we do it for the final of every event? Anyone got a way of making it happen?
A lovely simple but surprising mathematical problem this week (via Timothy M) …
