How a fly can stop a freight train
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A friend of mine passed this bit of logic on to me about 25 years ago and I am still trying to figure out if he was right or not.
Picture a set of railroad tracks running East and West. Picture a common housefly flying West at around 1 mile per hour about 10 feet above those railroad tracks. Now picture a train headed East on those same tracks at about 50 miles per hour, on a collision course with the fly. *SPLAT*
Now’s when it gets interesting. After the impact, the fly - or what’s left of it - is headed East at the same speed as the train. Logically, if something was going West and now it’s going East along the same path without having turned at all, then it must have slowed down and, if only for a fraction of a microsecond, come to a complete stop. Now then, if the fly has stopped moving, and it’s up against the train, then the train must have stopped for the same fraction of a microsecond that the fly did. Therefore, the fly has, for the briefest of instants, stopped a freight train.
This problem brought to you because someone inflicted it upon me back in high school.
<sarcasm>
Thanks again, Bill!
</sarcasm>
Technorati Tags: useless, trivia, science, physics+puzzle
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