Saturday, August 4, 2007

Last Week's Puzzler...

Five of you got the right answer on this one, and only two got it wrong. But most of you didn't even try!

The scale of the universe is really difficult to truly grasp. Even the scale of our local neighborhood – the solar system – is amazing. If you were to continue the model used for last week's puzzler, if the sun is a foot in diameter, how big are we? Answer: about 17 billionths of an inch tall. We're pretty insignificant in the solar system!

This Week's Puzzler...

Imagine that you owned a water tank located on a hill behind your house. The water tank is 300 feet from the house, on an uphill slope that averages 30° from the horizontal. If you filled the tank with water, and ran a pipe from the tank to your house, what water pressure (in pounds per square inch) would you expect to see (at your house)? Enter your answer on the poll at right.