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   3 NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE RIDDLES
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   Author  Topic: 3 NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE RIDDLES  (Read 15400 times)
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Re: 3 NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE RIDDLES  
« Reply #50 on: Mar 6th, 2008, 5:13am »
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on Mar 5th, 2008, 7:10pm, Roy wrote:
Now then, i was away from these boards for a while, when was srn347 banned and under what violation (so i can smile to myself)?

He was banned sometime in the early morning of 4 October (UTC), presumably for being his usual charming self, although no direct reason was given (and William doesn't need to give one--it's his board after all).
 
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Re: 3 NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE RIDDLES  
« Reply #51 on: Mar 6th, 2008, 4:05pm »
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Now that srn347 is gone, could someone work on banning temporary?
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Re: 3 NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE RIDDLES  
« Reply #52 on: Mar 6th, 2008, 4:37pm »
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Nah, temp may be pretty clueless, but he's no where near srm347's disruptiveness -- not even in the top five annoying characters I've seen around here.  Banning should be an action of last resort, and I, at least, haven't had any problem simply ignoring temporary.  Problem solved. Wink
 
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Re: 3 NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE RIDDLES  
« Reply #53 on: Mar 11th, 2008, 10:35pm »
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William owns the board? Now I know who banned srn347 and that he(or she) might have had no reason for doing it. But just because he is gone, doesn't mean his threads should be ignored. Don't let the flame die out! Since all the questions in this one have been solved, I might as well carry on for him. Next question:
what would happen if a person moved their shadow faster than light while the person is slower than light(this is possible depending on the light source and the distance)? Would the shadow predict the person's movement?
« Last Edit: Mar 15th, 2008, 9:48pm by temporary » IP Logged

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Re: 3 NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE RIDDLES  
« Reply #54 on: Mar 12th, 2008, 6:08am »
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on Mar 11th, 2008, 10:35pm, temporary wrote:
William owns the board?

Well, technically the Open Computing Facility of the University of California, Berkeley owns the board, but Willian Wu is its founder and sole administrator.
 
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Now I know who banned srn347 and that he(or she) night have had no reason for doing it.

While William never commented directly on the ban, I think it's safe to assume he did it because one (or more) of the moderators asked him to and he agreed.
 
The moderators of this board (and until last year that was only towr and Icarus, so they deserve most of the credit) it seems have always tried to gently nudge the discussions around here toward a certain "character": one of openness to discussion and a willingness to learn.  Very few regulars on this board seem to have much of an "ego" regarding their answers/opinions/ideas, and I think it's exactly that "character" that attracts the high caliber of regulars this board has.  There are some very knowledgeable and intelligent folks hanging around here, and they're (almost) always willing to help out anyone who asks.
 
For over a month, srn347 did his best to completely obliterate that "character".  He was belligerent and rude, insisting on the rightness of his position in the face of any argument to the contrary, and treating everyone who disagreed with him as beneath his contempt.  Not only did he not have a willingness to learn, he actively resisted it; in his 700+ posts, not once did he admit to even the slightest error in judgment or understanding.  He was the anti-wu :: forums, and the sheer volume of his ramblings (over 20 posts a day, on average) dropped the signal-to-noise ratio around here so low that several of the regulars simply stopped posting.  That's why the moderators asked William to ban him; because he was quickly and callously destroying a "character" -- a community -- that had taken years to form.  Believe me, he's not been missed.
 
The fact that you, temporary, hold him in such high esteem is quite frankly very troubling to me.  However, so far you haven't been particularly rude, you've only posted a few times a week, rather than 20 times a day, and I seem to remember you even admitting a mistake or two.  So long as you keep on like that I don't think there'll be any significant problems.
 
 
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Would the shadow predict the person's movement?

No, in fact, since the shadow is formed by the light that passes around the person, it will instead always lag somewhat behind the person's movements.  An observer in the plane where the shadow is formed, rather than seeing the shadow predict the person's movements, would instead sometimes see the shadow moving backward relative to the person's movement!
 
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Re: 3 NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE RIDDLES  
« Reply #55 on: Mar 13th, 2008, 6:08pm »
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Interesting, but are you sure shadows move slower than the person or lag behind? I heard the shadow would move at speed of (the distance from the lamp to the wall)(the speed of the person)/(the distance from the lamp to the person).
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Re: 3 NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE RIDDLES  
« Reply #56 on: Mar 13th, 2008, 7:50pm »
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on Mar 13th, 2008, 6:08pm, temporary wrote:
Interesting, but are you sure shadows move slower than the person or lag behind?

Positively... shadow's movements occur as a result of movement in the object (and the light source... but assuming that is constant, the only motion of the shadow will be in direct response to motion of the object and either way the shadow will lag behind whatever the change in position is)
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Re: 3 NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE RIDDLES  
« Reply #57 on: Mar 14th, 2008, 4:08am »
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on Mar 13th, 2008, 6:08pm, temporary wrote:
Interesting, but are you sure shadows move slower than the person or lag behind? I heard the shadow would move at speed of (the distance from the lamp to the wall)(the speed of the person)/(the distance from the lamp to the person).

To clarify; the apparent speed of the shadow can be faster than the speed of the person, and yes even faster than light; your formula is accurate in that respect.  However; if the person suddenly stops, the shadow will stop (slightly) after the person does because the shadow is caused by the light that passes by the person.
 
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Re: 3 NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE RIDDLES  
« Reply #58 on: Mar 14th, 2008, 6:40am »
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How does the shadow move faster than light, but it is the absence of light, so how would that work out?
 
As the shadow moves, Light takes the shadows place on one side, and is removed on the other, so the shadow moves at the speed of the incoming light, which is the speed of light?
 
Just tell me if i'm crazy, and ill try to reread this to make whatever sense we have put here.
 
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Re: 3 NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE RIDDLES  
« Reply #59 on: Mar 14th, 2008, 12:18pm »
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on Mar 14th, 2008, 6:40am, Master of Everything 42 wrote:
How does the shadow move faster than light, but it is the absence of light, so how would that work out?

Consider an example with very slow light: Wink

 
The light "waves" move outward from the center with a speed of , the speed of light.  The red ball moves around the center with a speed of (1/2), half the speed of light, but the center of the shadow appears to move around the outer wall with a speed of 2, twice the speed of light.  Even though each ray of light only moves at the speed of light, the rays don't move "along" the wall to fill in the shadow; instead it's always the "next" ray that keeps filling in the edge of the shadow, and there's no constraint on how quickly the "next" ray can hit the wall after "this" ray does, so the shadow -- which is made up of "nothing" -- can appear to move at any speed at all without breaking the laws of physics.
 
Note also, how the shadow follows along the wall well behind the rotation of the ball.  That's the time lag I was talking about above.
 
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As a moderator, it's probably best I don't name names on my mental annoyance list, but you've nothing to worry about. Smiley
 
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Re: 3 NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE RIDDLES  
« Reply #60 on: Mar 14th, 2008, 3:09pm »
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How does a shadow move, anyway?  It's like talking about the hole of a donut.
 
Consider the opposite, for simplicity: I shine a flashlight at a wall that's very far away.  If the wall is far enough away, I can make light on the wall move faster than light.  But nothing is actually moving faster than light.
 
Or suppose you organize a bunch of people so that a person X meters away from you stands up at exactly X/1000000000 seconds past the hour.  You will get a wave of people moving faster than light.
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Re: 3 NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE RIDDLES  
« Reply #61 on: Mar 15th, 2008, 9:57pm »
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Getting matter such as people to move faster than light requires infinite time or infinite acceleration, both requiring infinite energy. With non-matter(not to be confused with anti-matter) it is a bit different; they can be manipulated to move faster than light in certain ways(like the one I mentioned earlier).
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Re: 3 NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE RIDDLES  
« Reply #62 on: Mar 16th, 2008, 12:23am »
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No, the wave is moving faster than light.  The individual people aren't.  Let the height of a particle at position x and time t be h(x,t)=A cos(at - bx).  Then the wave speed is a/b, even though the speed of any given particle is |dh(x,t)/dt| a*A.  We can simultaneously make the particles as slow as we want, and the wave as fast as we want.
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Re: 3 NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE RIDDLES  
« Reply #63 on: Mar 25th, 2008, 6:19pm »
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Sounds like a paradox that the wave is faster than each individual person, but I'll take your word for it anyway.
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