I came across this apocryphal puzzle recently, attributed to both Albert Einstein and Lewis Carroll, although there’s no evidence for either. Einstein is said to have asserted that it was impossible for all but 2% of the population: perhaps he used it to deter students asking for tutoring from him. It exists in a number of different forms: one of my advanced higher students proudly brought me his (correct) solution to one of them this morning. It took him an hour and a half to solve. How long will you take to solve this version?
There are five houses.
The Englishman lives in the red house.
The Spaniard owns the dog.
Coffee is drunk in the green house.
The Ukrainian drinks tea.
The green house is immediately to the right of the ivory house.
The Old Gold smoker owns snails.
Kools are smoked in the yellow house.
Milk is drunk in the middle house.
The Norwegian lives in the first house.
The man who smokes Chesterfields lives in the house next to the man with the fox.
Kools are smoked in a house next to the house where the horse is kept.
This is worth checking out as you begin the hard work you need to do to be successful in the exams coming up in May. There are some really handy tips and information about how to get the best out of your brain through knowing a little about how it all works. Check it out here or by clicking on the brain.
I had an interesting lesson in Physics today from an experienced roof and chimney man, Jimmy Simpson. He came to my house to check out the chimney stack, to make sure it was safe for a new stove.
The idea is to check that the chinmey isn’t blocked or leaking, so smoke is sent up the chimney to see if it’s OK, but before he does that, he uses sound:
Sound placed at base of chimney stack
What next? Then, he just nips up on the roof to listen to the sound. Muffled means there’s a blockage of some kind. Too clear down the other stacks and there’s a leak. Look at him go:
Up to the roof...
... to listen for leaks
After this, he lit a smoke stick at the base of the chimney to see it went where it was supposed to go, and didn’t, where it wasn’t. For once, something to be sniffed at.
Finally, one more trip up to the roof to give the flue a brush before cleaning up and calling the job done. Jimmy says I can go ahead and get my stove fitted.
Chim-chiminy, chim-chiminy, chim-chim-cheree, Good luck will rub off when you shakes hands with me!
With the timetable being so tight, and all of us so busy at the moment (you wait until *after* Christmas!), thought it would be cool to have a place where we can ask questions, prompt, encourage and support each other without having to wait until we are all in the same room.
I have created Mr. Hood’s Forum for this purpose and set up a couple of places for us to get started. I hope you find it useful. Check it out!
This is the beginnings of a new site for Physics students. It will replace several previous attempts at providing a useful resource for my students and will subsume much of that previous content. Bear with me for a bit as I put it together. I’ll try and make it useful very quickly but the intention is to have it ready to launch after Summer 2009.
