# What strategy do you use to remove the ice cube from the water glass?

+1 vote
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You are enjoying your breakfast after having put some salt on your scrambled eggs when your nerdy brother presents you with an ice cube floating in a glass of water and a short length of string. He challenges you to remove the ice cube from the glass using the string without tying any knots.
What strategy do you use to remove the ice cube from the water glass?

posted Nov 17, 2015

Place the end of the string on the ice cube and pour salt on it.

SIXTY SECONDS LATER you can remove the cube of ice.

answer Nov 19, 2015 by anonymous

Take the string and soak it in the water. Let the string rest across the ice cube. Reach across the table and get the salt that you used on your eggs; pour the salt over the string and the ice cube. The salt causes the ice to melt. However, when you stop pouring the salt, the water that formed on the top of the cube will refreeze with the string embedded in it. Now you can lift the ice cube with the string.

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On a hot summer day by a lake you are determined to build a boat made of ice, using a refrigeration unit and a large mold in which you can pour water. Nearby you notice an Egyptian mummy resting on a pile of wood pulp.
What is the best strategy for building an ice boat that will not melt before you sail it across the lake?

+1 vote

If a cork is put into a glass of water, the cork will almost always drift to the side of the glass. There is one simple way, however, to get the cork to float in the center of the glass (the horizontal center, not the vertical). What is it? Water, the glass, and the cork are all that is required.

+1 vote

Which weighs more: a gallon of liquid water or a gallon of ice?

(With "weight" meaning, weight on the same planet, at the same location -- so literally, "which has more mass?")

First Clue: this is not related to the area of a circle (pi r squared). What's interesting about pi, is that it comes in 2 forms: digital (3.14159....) and degrees of a 1/2 circle (180 degrees). And a sine wave is an incredibly beautiful curve found everywhere in nature.

Once you get the answer, memorize it and how you arrived at it. And it will serve as a reference for problem solving in wave mechanics.

Remember, according to the De Broglie Wave Equation, everything in the entire Cosmos travels as both a wave and a particle. And sine waves, or approximations to sine waves, are the standard form of travel representing everything from light waves, sound waves, to waves on an ocean.

The study of wave mechanics will then lead you to the understanding of Fourier Analysis/Transformation, noise cancellation head phones, and unlimited adventures in science and math.

Moral of the story: Sine Waves rule! And to figure out how powerful they are you must know how to integrate the area/volume.
Second Clue: "integrate".
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