Saturday, January 31, 2009

Mathematician, Physicist, Engineer, and girl

An engineer, a mathematician, and a physicist are each presented with a beautiful woman, standing 8 feet away from them, and the stipulation that at each time interval, they may move half of the remaining distance towards her.

The mathematician concludes that after N iterations there will be 8 divided by 2N feet remaining which will never equal zero so he gives up on the spot.

The physicist opines that if each iteration requires a finite amount of energy then the energy expended in the approach will be inversely proportional to the distance remaining and gives up on the spot.

The engineer says "8 feet, 4 feet, 2 feet, 1 foot, 6 inches... that's close enough."

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