January 3, 2002<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
OLD CHALLENGE<\/b>. How would night and day differ if Jupiter’s orbit held instead a second, little sun?<\/p>\n
ANSWER<\/b>. When the earth was on the other side of the Sun from Jupiter-sun, day and night would be as now. As the earth moved around, days would lengthen, until when the earth was in between the Sun and Jupiter-sun, all locations would enjoy 24 hours of sunlight. Little Jupiter-sun would rise just as the Sun set. One pole would see only the Sun, the other only little Jupiter-sun. Of course, Jupiter-sun would presumably be much dimmer than the Sun.<\/p>\n
QUESTIONABLE MATHEMATICS<\/b>. Howard Waldman found the following quotes at\u00a0www.uselessfacts.net<\/a>\u00a0(a very funny site):<\/p>\n “Better make it six, I can’t eat eight.”<\/i>\u00a0– Dan Osinski, Baseball pitcher, when a waitress asked if he wanted his pizza cut into six or eight slices<\/p>\n “Pitching is 80% of the game. The other half is hitting and fielding.”<\/i>\u00a0– Mickey Rivers, baseball player<\/p>\n “Half this game is ninety percent mental.”<\/i>\u00a0– Danny Ozark, Philadelphia Phillies manager<\/p>\n “We talked five times. I called him twice, and he called me twice.”<\/i>\u00a0– Larry Bowa, California Angels coach<\/p>\n “Any time Detroit scores more than 100 points and holds the other team below 100 points they almost always win.”<\/i>\u00a0– Doug Collins, basketball commentator<\/p>\n Readers are invited to submit more examples of questionable mathematics.<\/p>\n NEW CHALLENGE<\/b>. The new year 2002 is a palindrome, the same backwards as forwards. How common are palindrome years?<\/p>\n MATH CHAT<\/b>\u00a0wishes all readers and friends a happy and progressive 2002!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Copyright 2002, Frank Morgan.<\/p>\n Send answers, comments, and new questions by email to\u00a0Frank.Morgan@williams.edu,<\/a>\u00a0to be eligible for\u00a0Flatland\u00a0<\/i>and other book awards. Winning answers will appear in the next Math Chat. Math Chat appears on the first and third Thursdays of each month. Prof. Morgan’s homepage is at\u00a0www.williams.edu\/Mathematics\/fmorgan.<\/a><\/p>\n THE MATH CHAT BOOK,<\/a>\u00a0including a $1000 Math Chat Book\u00a0QUEST,\u00a0<\/a>questions and answers, and a list of past challenge winners, is now available from the MAA (800-331-1622).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" January 3, 2002 OLD CHALLENGE. How would night and day differ if Jupiter’s orbit held instead a second, little sun? ANSWER. When the earth was on the other side of the Sun from Jupiter-sun, day and night would be as now. As the earth moved around, days would lengthen, until when the earth was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2965,"featured_media":0,"parent":3459,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3494","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/Morgan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/Morgan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/Morgan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/Morgan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2965"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/Morgan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3494"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/Morgan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3495,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/Morgan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3494\/revisions\/3495"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/Morgan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/Morgan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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