Monthly Archives: November 2014

Q: When “drawing straws” is it better to be first or last?

Physicist: As long as the person who cut the straws: 1) takes the last remaining straw and 2) has a decent poker face (or doesn’t know which is which), then it’s completely fair.  If they have a bad poker face, … Continue reading

Posted in -- By the Physicist, Math, Probability | 7 Comments

Q: What would happen if there was a giant straw connecting the Earth’s atmosphere right above the ground to space?

Physicist: About the same thing that happens to a straw in a glass of water: the water level in the straw evens out with the water level outside. A tube from the ground to space would fill with air of … Continue reading

Posted in -- By the Physicist, Physics | 13 Comments

Q: Can a human being survive in the fourth dimension?

Physicist: Nopers.  But to understand why, it’s important to know what a dimension is. When someone says “we live in the third dimension” what they should really say (to be overly-precise) is “the universe we inhabit has three spacial dimensions”.  … Continue reading

Posted in -- By the Physicist, Math, Paranoia, Physics | 88 Comments