A Question

Post by **johnriley1uk** » Sat May 27, 2006 4:58 pm

Here's a question to wrestle with:

How can a man marry his widow's sister?

Fez · Post by **Fez** » Sat May 27, 2006 5:31 pm

i hate these questions as the obvious answer always eludes me and i end up jounreying deep into the realms of the surreal, so bare with me. if it's his widow then he therefore must have been declared dead by mistake, and as a dead man cannot be considered still married, he therefore is no longered tied to his old wife and is therefore free to get it on with her sister. okay, so where have i gone wrong...?

Post by **Mike** » Sat May 27, 2006 5:36 pm

HIS widow. . . .Okay. I really don't know. I have to side with fez. Shudder.

Post by **johnriley1uk** » Sat May 27, 2006 5:50 pm

I'll post the right answer a little later to give everyone else a chance to get there first!

TAOWBST · Post by **TAOWBST** » Sat May 27, 2006 7:29 pm

He can't....dead men can't marry.

mr_e · Post by **mr_e** » Sat May 27, 2006 8:42 pm

Fez's reply makes sense, I'll have to go with that. Unless he happens to have some kind of widow around as a slave or something, then it's easy.

Post by **johnriley1uk** » Sat May 27, 2006 8:54 pm

OK, here's the answer:

A man married a woman who died. He then married her sister. He died. The first wife was his widow's sister.

mr_e · Post by **mr_e** » Sat May 27, 2006 9:00 pm

I'm going to be a sore loser and say that the wording in the question is incorrect for that to be the answer, as "marry" implies a future action.

Nice brain-teaser, though.

Post by **johnriley1uk** » Sat May 27, 2006 9:05 pm

Being a sore loser, albeit an honest one, is OK...

Here's another statement:

No bullet can overtake a running man.

Who can prove this statement?

Post by **Mike** » Sun May 28, 2006 8:11 am

I think this one is to do with some sort of Newtonian Physics. IE if two objects are moving in the same direction albeit at different speeds they can never be in exactly the same place. This is because by the time the bullet arrives at the exact position the man occupied he will have moved alittle bit further, and so on.

This problem is mathematically correct, however, the assumptions are sort of flawed. The bullet can get sooooo close that it does not matter that it is not in the exact position of the man. EG He has been killed by the bullet therfore he stops and is run through.

Weird no?

Post by **johnriley1uk** » Sun May 28, 2006 8:22 am

Very close, Mike, and aren't we all up and about early this morning?

The precise answer goes like this:

"A bullet is fired at a (retreating) running man. By the time the bullet has reached the man's point of departure the man has retreated. The bullet then has to cover extra distance but finds that the man has retreated further. It covers that too, only to find that again the man is not there. And so on and so on.

Each successive advance occupies a finite length of time no matter how small. You cannot divide and subdivide a fraction to produce zero. The series is infinite. An infinite number of time periods totals an infinite time. The bullet does not hit the man because it cannot get to him."

And let it be quite clear that I am not volunteering to test this theory...

mr_e · Post by **mr_e** » Sun May 28, 2006 3:27 pm

It's an interesting one, because it's sort of correct, yet we all know it's total bollocks in practice. I had to draw it to make sense of it, and it's total mathematical sophistry: if you draw it on paper with the assumption the bullet is moving twice as fast as the man (!) and the man gets a head start equal to the bullet's speed, you'll find that it does work, as long as the time never actually reaches two seconds, which is, of course, total crap. I'll try to draw it in text (brace yourselves):

0.00: B-------M--------
1.00: --------B---M----
1.50: ------------B-M--
1.75: --------------BM-

Or am I missing the point?

Fez · Post by **Fez** » Sun May 28, 2006 4:28 pm

let me be perdantic. a bullet can never overtake a running man because once the bullets hits him he starts to stagger and eventually falls over dead. therefore a bullet can never overtake a running man because the sole purpose of the bullet is to bring the man down, not get ahead of him.

Post by **johnriley1uk** » Sun May 28, 2006 4:35 pm

Thanks for joining in this exploration of a bit of Diabologic!

mr_e · Post by **mr_e** » Sun May 28, 2006 8:37 pm

Fez wrote:let me be perdantic. a bullet can never overtake a running man because once the bullets hits him he starts to stagger and eventually falls over dead. therefore a bullet can never overtake a running man because the sole purpose of the bullet is to bring the man down, not get ahead of him.

Depends if you're sadistic and actually aim the bullet at the running man. You could shoot it beside him to avoid needless loss of life. Psycho. I'll let you off though, as the wording in the answer does imply that. Besides, if it's a bullet from a high velocity rifle like the M82 (anti-vehicle sniper rifle), it may well go right through him.

johnriley1uk, are you getting these from a website, or are you coming up with them yourself? Not sure if I want the link for the site, they'd drive me crazy...