I just read this intuition confounder from Ludwig Wittgenstein, via Brian Eno, and it's really messing with my head:
You want to tie a ribbon around the Earth (which we assume to be a perfect sphere for the sake of this hypothetical story), but you accidentally cut the ribbon a bit too long — you're off by a metre. If you distribute the excess ribbon evenly around the circumference of the Earth, how far above the surface will it hover?
Math nerds, resist the urge to work it out, and just take a guess. It's meant to test your intuition. The actual answer, which I've verified with basic geometry and put in the comments section, will astound you.
This bit of mind-blowery is brought to you by Edge.org's list of interesting thinkers' favourite "deep, elegant, or beautiful explanations," Eno's of which is "The Limits of Intuition." Thanks, Jenny, for the endlessly fascinating link.
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2 comments:
Around 16 cm! That's half a foot. Eno says only dressmakers and mathematicians get it right.
Dressmakers? I am a dressmaker and my intuition said a smidgen. I put it to my mathematician brother and he said calculations quickly bullied his intuition and he got 1/2pi metres, or 16cm. He was still amazed, however.
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