Rope Around The Earth Puzzle

The idea is to imagine the earth is a cube or just a square really and ask yourself if you added say 8 feet to the rope how far would that raise it above the square earth.

Rope around the earth puzzle.

From the diagram it s pretty clear it s one foot. This gem from 1702 shows how simple intuition may fail us. Now imagine the rope is made just one meter longer and lifted uniformly off the surface until it is once again taught. From there it s not hard to believe that adding 3 feet to a rope around the actual earth would raise it almost 6 inches.

Imagine a rope that runs completely around the earth s equator flat against the ground assume the earth is a perfect sphere without any mountains or valleys. Suppose poindexter takes a very long rope and wraps it around the equator of the earth. In the case of our string around the earth puzzle the radius is being increased by 15cm so we need to know that as a fraction of the original radius. Rope around the earth puzzle imagine a rope that fits snugly all the way around the earth like a ring on a person s finger.

Rope around the earth puzzle 1702. Assume he has just the right length that makes this work without any slack. In a common version of this puzzle string is wrapped around the equator of a perfectly spherical earth. Student answer form blackline master rope around the world you have a piece of rope that just fits around the earth.

If you put 1 metre high sticks right around the equator and lay the rope on. The rope around the earth puzzle. This string is cut and a piece 1 metre 3 ft 3 in in length is added in. Imagine a rope tied around the earth s equator like a ring on a person s finger.

The string is now rearranged so that it is at a uniform height above the equator. Now imagine lifting off this very long rope don t ask me how cutting it somewhere so as to stitch into it exactly one meter of extra rope. Update on the rope around the earth puzzle in the light of the recently observed gravitational waves.