No YouTube for a month!

I need to break the addiction! I am falling behind on several different things and need to get my life organized before coming back to YouTube. I now have three different channels:

TheMathGuy: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=TheMathGuy
From now on, this channel will just be about math. Of course I still reserve the right to apply math to any real world question I choose, including ones that may or may not have implications pertaining to religion.

VlogOfTheMathGuy: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=VlogOfTheMathGuy
A vlog where I talk about my personal life and boring stuff like that!

InPursuitOfTruth: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=InPursuitOfTruth
A channel devoted to the pursuit of truth, scientific/critical thinking, how to tell the difference between real science and pseudoscience, human gullibility/delusions/hallucinations, how to know what's really true (or at least do the best you can), why I don't believe religion contains that truth, why I think it is unlikely there is any god, why I care and why it matters what people believe, etc...

Stay tuned as I plan to return on June 15, 2008!

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• leaving
• youtube
• farewell
• return
• addiction
• leaning
• tower
• pennies

[Prepoceros]

It's definitely possible, friction or no friction.

I think your series of distances is off. Say the leading edge of the top penny is at 0, and the trailing edge is at 1. Then the second penny has to start at 1/2.

The center of mass of these two is at 3/4, so that's where the third penny starts. Similarly, the fourth penny starts at 11/12, and the fifth at 50/48.

So with only five pennies, carefully balanced, the top penny can extend completely past the base.

Nice problem!

[TheMathGuy]

Well, what do you know. Of course! I think this problem does an excellent job of illustrating the dangers of generalizing a perceived pattern too soon. 0, 1/2, 3/4, NOT 7/8 as I had assumed! So now what I'm wondering is: Is there some finite limit to how far that last penny can go? Or with an infinite supply of pennies could you get the top penny as far displaced horizontally from the bottom one as you like? And is the natural "greedy" algorithm guaranteed to find the global optimum?

[wogsland]

YouTube is the ultimate time sink - good luck putting your life back together!

[DrZarkloff]

Welcome back. I'm sorry too see you go.

[atypicalguy]

maybe your desk is slightly tilted

[KashEzy]

For some reason fractions kept coming up in my mind, but I'm sorta drunk so math is useless right about now.

Please make math vids when you find the time. :)

[KashEzy]

That's cool man, take care of yourself.

I went ahead and subbed to your other channels too.

And the penny thing, I have no idea, I was hoping that you could teach me that :P

[CousinoMacul]

Have a nice break Nate.