Thursday, September 4, 2008

Sudoku solver and some other problems

I got a comment today on my post Algorithm for solving Sudoku puzzles with a link to a program for solving sudoku online. So if you have problems with a particular hard puzzle, give it a try. The program is called Sudoku solver.

I also stumbled on an excellent collection of simple physic problems. You can find the collection here. Unfortunately there are no solution to the problems there, but they seems all to be of the type that requires understanding of physics and not knowledge of math and formulas. Since I am trying to write a math blog, it would be pointless for me to write solutions to these problems. However, I want to solve the first problem:


You are given two identical steel balls of radius 5 cm. One ball is resting on a table, the other ball is hanging from a thin string. Both balls are heated (e.g., with a blow torch) until their radii have increased to the same value of 5.01 cm. Which ball absorbed more heat and why?

The answer - the ball that lays on the table will absorb more heat. The reason to this is that the heat can escape better from the ball when the ball touches another object, in this case the table. When the ball is suspended in the air, the heat also escapes but the rate of the escape is lower. This is due to the fact that air is much less dense that a table.
Since more heat escapes, more hear will be required to heat the ball on the table.

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Water balls

Apparently there is a chemical way to cause water to turn into solid balls at room temperature. For instruction see the video below:


How to Turn "water" into Balls - For more funny videos, click here


I am not sure if this one is not fake, however. The thing that makes me suspicious is that water turns into balls when it is out of the tank. In my opinion, there are simply glass balls of the same color inside of the water. While in the water they are invisible.