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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!lanl!lhl
From: lhl@lanl.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.puzzle
Subject: Re: Polar paradox (SPOILER?)
Message-ID: <35634@lanl.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 30-Dec-85 10:05:21 EST
Article-I.D.: lanl.35634
Posted: Mon Dec 30 10:05:21 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 31-Dec-85 01:06:24 EST
References: <2667@sunybcs.UUCP> <3119@sdcc3.UUCP>
Distribution: net
Organization: The New Mexico Institute for the Incurably Different
Lines: 19

> In article <2667@sunybcs.UUCP> colonel@sunybcs (Col. G. L. Sicherman) writes:
> >Here's a new one: a practical joker tampered with the Great Explorer's
> >gyrocompass, so it points 45 degrees off.  The Great Explorer thinks
> >he's going due north on his way to the North Pole, but he's really going
> >due northwest!
> >
> >Will he reach the North Pole anyway?  (Geographers keep out of this one!)
> 
> If a 'gyrocompass' is such a device that it can be mis-aligned by 45 degrees
> despite the above, then our explorer will spiral in to the pole, assuming he
> checks his direction constantly.

*** PICTURE YOUR ADVERTISEMENT HERE ***

  Of course, if a 'gyrocompass' is a device which maintains its direction in
an inertial frame, at some point, not the north pole, it will point straight
up.  There the explorer will stop.

Dear Santa Claus: Yes, there is a Virginia.                        Howland Owl