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Edited by o0MrCheesy0o: 4/16/2013 7:52:43 PM
8

Thought Experiment

Imagine: You wake up inside a room with no windows and one locked door (you checked). You cannot see outside. Looking around you see a table with a number of items on it: a desk lamp (plugged in and turned on), a tennis ball, a bunch of string, a pitcher of water and a cup, a candle, a box of matches, and a music player with headphones. A skateboard and a wooden stool are also in the room. The music player has a sign on it saying “Turn on for instructions,” so you do. You are told that you are in a specially designed vibration-proof and noise-proof train car on a set of straight and level train tracks. Your task is to use one or more of the items in the room, perhaps in combination with each other, to determine whether the train car is stationary or is moving on the tracks. There is a thirty-minute time limit for your test (or tests), and destroying or modifying the walls, floor, or ceiling of the car is not permitted.

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  • I throw the ball into the air and see if it goes up and down in a straight line.

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  • Edited by Plasma Eagle: 4/16/2013 8:23:36 PM
    I wait until the 29th minute. I stand next to the door waiting for the man to come in if I won or lost and club him on the head with the stool. I quickly take all the possesions I can carry and use this brief period of time for my escape. I dash out of the door to find the train has not been moving but it is on an arched bridge spanning over a valley. I run the opposite way the train is traveling so that the conductor might not see me. While running away I notice the there is a North Korean flag on the train and motivated by patriotism I decide to put a stop to Kim Jung Um's devious plot. I hitch under the last car of the train and wait for it to start up again. The train starts up again and hours later the train arrives at a Korean Military base. Soon soldiers begin to search the train to make sure the escaped test subject(me) did not make it back with the train. A soldier walking alongside the train is checking under it to make sure no one is hanging on to the bottom like myself. I toss the music player out from under the train and the guard, being so amazed by such advanced technology, stops searching the train. I use this moment to hit the guard on the back pf his head with the skate board and steal his uniform and gun. I then infiltrate the facility only to find out that it is Kim Jung Um's Nuclear testing facility and that he is making a visit today. I infiltrate the command center and set the nuke to explode in 30 minutes, 10 minutes after the beloved dictator arrives. When I am leaving the control center I lock eyes with a guard, and after he realised I was an American, a firefight broke out. It was me against thousands of the underfed soldiers. 10 minutes on the clock, I needed a way out. I jumped in the driver's seat of a North Korean supply truck and floored it out of the facility. With one minute left on the timer I looked in the rear view mirror to watch the facility explode and listened to "America, F*** Yeah!" as I rode out the nuclear blast. It was a proud day to be an American. And that's how I found out if the train car was moving or not.

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    • In the case of a moving train, is traveling at a constant speed or accelerating?

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      • how high is the ceiling sir ?

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        • Edited by A Good Troll: 4/16/2013 8:01:58 PM
          Light the door on fire and look outside. Hey, you said I couldn't destory or modify the walls, floor, or ceiling. My door is fair game.

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          • I assume the "music player" is not a radio? If it is, find a weak signal and see if that signal remains so or changes in strength. Change indicates movement; no change indicates stationary. Other than that, this seems impossible, since motion is relative and there doesn't seem to be a way to find a reference that wouldn't also be in the same motion as the car.

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          • This task is either impossible or is easily solved with Newtonian physics. Also, what's the catch?

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            • Alright, time to see if watching all those episodes of McGuyver payed off!

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