Comments | mothwentbad: (без темы)

mothwentbad

(Untitled)

Aug 07, 2007 19:08

Back to all threads

langostino August 8 2007, 01:17:22 UTC

Question 9 is problematic--the height-to-volume and volume-to-surface-area formulae for a golden calf are unlikely to be in the book, ne?

Or are we assuming that all golden calves have the same proportions?

jazzchic23 August 8 2007, 02:05:57 UTC

They are all spherical, no? Like horses?

langostino August 8 2007, 02:15:13 UTC

And bunnies, according to the New York Times.

mothwentbad August 8 2007, 11:35:46 UTC

Yeah... Otherwise, it's... not really a calf. It's something else.

And we're making the usual linearity assumption on cleaning time.

langostino August 8 2007, 12:58:38 UTC

Similar proportions, maybe--but there are skinny calves and fat calves, and calves with longer or shorter legs.

I mean, come on, the Israelites thought π=3. How good at constructing proportional calves could they have been?

mothwentbad August 8 2007, 12:59:57 UTC

Egyptonazi.

how good could they have been at constructing golden calves bec_87rb August 8 2007, 14:38:20 UTC

Eh, if ya beat them enough, they can make bricks with no straw, so proportional idols are not a problem. Seriously, though, I agree about the calf statue thing - Galileo insists that we make the legs thicker as the calf gets larger, right? And in a competing mode, since this is an artistic endeavor, they might have made the bigger calf disproportionately taller and thinner for better visual effect. It's a tricky question at best.

Personally, I like the giraffe Napoleon question best. :D

Re: how good could they have been at constructing golden calves mothwentbad August 8 2007, 16:38:49 UTC

Eh, solid gold doesn't have the biomechanical issues that calves do. I don't know at what size a scaled-up calf would start to fracture, but it's not at 7 feet tall. TRY SEVEN MILES!

By the way, in a previous problem, I had the wayward Israelites take up quilting. (They had taken up idolatry already in a previous episode)

Yeah.

in a previous problem, I had the wayward Israelites take up quilting bec_87rb August 8 2007, 18:16:02 UTC

I think it's safer - no hot melted metals, no idolatry.

Tiny Feynman Icon approved this pedagogical choice.

Re: in a previous problem, I had the wayward Israelites take up quilting mothwentbad August 8 2007, 18:23:25 UTC

But... poke poke!

Poke! mothwentbad August 8 2007, 18:25:37 UTC

NOT SAFE!

mothwentbad August 8 2007, 11:46:51 UTC

I think the "altar boy cleaning hour (abch)" should be widely used as a unit of surface area. Kind of like a light year, but with altar boys.

Back to all threads