Saturday, April 28, 2007

Try This One at Home

I am sometimes teased about my fascination with games and math problems.  My last entry was one of those...how to measure the height of a flagpole (without climbing it with a tape measure clutched between your teeth).

So, you wont mind if I boast a bit. I did figure out what number that 18 is sixty percent of.

Try that yourself. 

Run your cursor over the answer to reveal it.  Answer Thirty

 67 is is 39 percent of what number? Answer  172 (rounded off)

22 is 77 percent of what number? Answer 29 (rounded off)

Now try this.

I want to make a little wheel out of platic or cardboard that I can roll along the ground and measure feet. What should the diameter of the wheel be, in inches AND 16ths of an inch, so that each rotation of the wheel will mark one foot.  I can count the rotations and know the distance travelled in feet.

OH, I am NOT putting the answer here.  I want to see what YOU come up with. By the way, to actually make such a wheel, you'd need to know the RADIUS too, so you could draw the circle.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, you scoffers who laughed at my flagpole measuring gig.

LATER; Great work, Silk. (See comments below)  I made a wheel of paper 1.9 inches in radius.  I tried to wheel it along but it was too floppy.  So I guess I will stick to tape measure, or wheel chair odometer. I had fun with this adventure.

 

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

You are just to smart for me Chuck. I wouldn't even know how to began doing that. I was never good at math. Helen

Anonymous said...

You are amazing !!! Thanks for sharing some of your knowledge with me !

Anonymous said...

what if I don't want to???????    not when I have you to figure it out for us
Sandra

Anonymous said...

The RADIUS (which is how I do calculations with circles) should be 4 inches 13/16, which makes for a DIAMETER of 9 inches 10/16. Anywhere near right? Sorry, I was not brought up on imperial measurements.

Anonymous said...

Note to Pharmolo below"  a diameter of 9 and 5/8 would carry the wheel forward 30 inches with each revolution... a bit too high... I mean a LOT too high.

Anonymous said...

Chuck if you laid that pole on the ground what would the length be ? LOL!
Have a great day my friend!

Anonymous said...

Ummmm... they make those little rollie things that measure stuff. We used to use one to measure out and mark where the tents would go on the show. They actually have a little meter at the top that will tell you in inches or feet how far you've rolled and a reset button to put it back to zero <g>
http://journals.aol.com/astaryth/AdventuresofanEclecticMind/
http://adventuresofaneclecticmind.blogspot.com/

Anonymous said...

I fear for the future of our nation.  I waited to se if someone else would do it.  Bleck.

Ok - imagine a circle enclosed in a square.  Imagine that the length of each side of the square is "d".  Then the perimeter of the square is 4d.  The perimeter of the circle is obviously smaller.  It happens to be 3.1412d, and that's how you remember that the formula for the circumference of a circle is pi times the diameter.  (This explanation is not for Chuck.  He knows that.)

Therefore
12 = 3.1412d
d=12/3.1412
d=3.82
radius is half that, so
r=1.9

~~Silk
http://SilkenDrum.blogspot.com/