More time wasting puzzles
Okay, it looks like the moving runway has been put to bed, so here's one with no tricky words and the chance of actually trying it at home.
You've got an empty mayonaise jar sitting on your fancy electronic postal scale and all is working fine. You notice a fly taking a rest on the bottom of the jar. The fly now lifts off and hovers inside the jar. Does the scale register a change?
If the scale does read lighter now, where did the weight of the fly go? Would it matter whether the jar had a lid?
If, on the other hand, the scale still indicates the combined weight, how high can the fly go? What if the jar suddenly vanished? Would the reading drop by only the weight of the jar and still register the weight of the hovering fly?
When you feel good about your answer, ask yourself how things would differ if the jar were full of water and a fish.
No obfuscation on this one; just plain old physics -- I think.
Okay, it looks like the moving runway has been put to bed, so here's one with no tricky words and the chance of actually trying it at home.
You've got an empty mayonaise jar sitting on your fancy electronic postal scale and all is working fine. You notice a fly taking a rest on the bottom of the jar. The fly now lifts off and hovers inside the jar. Does the scale register a change?
If the scale does read lighter now, where did the weight of the fly go? Would it matter whether the jar had a lid?
If, on the other hand, the scale still indicates the combined weight, how high can the fly go? What if the jar suddenly vanished? Would the reading drop by only the weight of the jar and still register the weight of the hovering fly?
When you feel good about your answer, ask yourself how things would differ if the jar were full of water and a fish.
No obfuscation on this one; just plain old physics -- I think.
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