The Rain Debate...

[DavidHooper]

The world is a perfect sphere. A rain storm is approaching, due to last one hour exactly. There is no shelter. The rain falls evenly everywhere across the globe. You want to stay as dry as possible. What should you do and why?

[DerFarm]

ummmmm....It would seem to me that you have left off some
information.

1. You say "evenly across the globe". Do you mean that there is
a circular band running from the NorthPole to the SouthPole and
back up the other side? Or is the rain falling on one hemisphere
at a time....like sunlight.

2. Presumably you can't out run the band of rain. If the rain is
hemispheric then it would make logical sense to move as fast as
possible in the same direction until the band of rain catches you.
At that point, run in the opposite direction thru the rain until you
exit the other side. At that point begin going again in the
direction of the rain.

There is probably some kind of stupid trick to the whole thing
anyway.

[DavidHooper]

1) the rain is falling everywhere over the whole globe evenly
2) see 1

there's no definite answer here yet - i jus made this up!

[beachbum]

Hi
Are u trying to mimic the run vs walk argument in rain? I think that this experiment has been done a number of times but i cant remember the result (heard it on a radio science show). If memory serves correctly it depended on the angle of the rain fall.
Regards
Stuart

[Kaverin]

I've never heard this before, but I couldn't resist being a smartass

1) put on your rain coat
2) don't drink any alcoholic beverages (and thus stay "dry")
3) leave the planet

[Sam Finch]

My guess is stand still. Then only your head and shoulders get wet, If you move around your front gets wet but your head and shoulders don't get any dryer.

[Nucleus]

Sam, Beachbum already covered that; what if the rain is falling at an angle?

You could try and mimimize your surface area though.

[DavidHooper]

lets suppose that the rain falls perpendicular to the ground.
And lets suppose that you are a 1x1x1 cube so you cannot curl up etc etc. Suppose you could run at fast as you like (if you wanted). Be imaginative.

Some pointers:
What happens if you run at the speed of light?
(Perhaps escape velocity! - jus kidding)

[beachbum]

Ok
so i am a very fast piece of sugar with legs... what was the original question again??? one lump or two?

[Judd]

and hide in it, thus staying perfectly dry.

[Nucleus]

So I am a cube with no legs and can run at the speed of light

If I stayed with one face flat on the ground then rain would soak 5 of the 6 sides. If you stood on an edge at 45 degrees to the ground...

[DavidHooper]

*chuckle*

seriously though. think of a rain droplet. say you are running so it just misses you. in fact you are running so fast that you run right around the world and then it hits you. or maybe it hits you the next time you run (move!) around the world. Whatever. This indicates that you should stay stock still...

[Kaverin]

Well of course you should stand still. I sure wouldn't want to be running into any matter (even gases) when I'm moving at relativistic velocities.

[DaoK]

What should you do and why?

Stay at home .

[wossname]

Judd, the whole would fill up with water, making you wetter than if you had stayed on the surface.

Unless you dig a J shaped hole and hide on a shelf inside the up-turn of the J.

Short of raising your own body temperature to over 7000 degrees C (the rain would evaporate before it hits your rapidly disintegrating corpse), there isnt a lot you can do on this crappy planet.

Perhaps this sphere idea is an illusion of a hysterical sugar-cube halllucinating at the thought of being boiled alive in a cup of intergalactic tea.

This is the weirdest thread I've ever seen.

[DavidHooper]

*chuckle*

[DaoK]

You can live in the ground

[THEROB]

1) put up your umbrella
2) Wonder why you are on such a strange plannet
3) Tap your comm badge and say one to beam out

[Guv]

It seems to me that it does not matter what you do if you are going to be in the rain for an hour.

Sam and Nucleus probably have the right idea. Stay still and protect part of yourself. For the cube balance on one edge (or maybe a corner). For a man, get on your hands and knees. This solution might be OK for a few minutes, but I suspect that the water would find its way to the protected areas in an hour.

I think the original problem considered walking or running a short distance in the rain. Say from the house to the barn or from your house to your car. For this problem, I think the answer is to run. Running minimizes the time spent in the rain. This answer might be correct for any rainfall angle.

[wossname]

I have two further solutions:

1. Craft a klein-bottle out of bits of the landscape and hide inside it.

2. Set up a black hole a few hundred thousand miles above the planet and cling on to the grass, the rain will be sucked upwards leaving you dry (and gasping for breath in the cold, lonely depths of space, while being stretched lengthwise until you're infinitely thin. But these are merely insignificant trivialities when one's only concern is staying dry.)

[DavidHooper]

i like it! you'd have to craft the klein bottle around you of course, though couldn't you build and hide in a solid shelter of any shape?

perhaps if you run (or slide since you're a cube) around for a while you would superheat and then boil all the water...

[wossname]

Ahh, yes, but building a shed wouldn't impress anyone, would it !

[Guv]

A Klein Bottle has neither an inside nor an outside. How do you use it to stay out of the rain?

BTW: Have you ever tried to visualize a true Klein Bottle, which can only exist in 4D or a higher space? There is no such object in 3D. The usual picture of a 3D bottle with the neck bent around to intersect one side does not really convey the weirdness of the true bottle, which is incredibly symmetric.

[NotLKH]

I'd Balance on a point, and spin at the speed of light. Any rain
hitting me would fly off, and I'd stay dry. Dizzy, but dry.

{ and spin...thus creating the worlds strongest tornado. This
tornado would suck all the water out of the sky, and the rain
would stop, thus allowing everybody else to remain dry, too! }

{ and spin... Thus having gained Infinite mass, turn into a black
hole, which would suck all the approaching water into myself, and
as it enters, all that water would convert to energy, having
approached light speed itself, thus heating all around me to a
nice, hot temperature, drying everything off from any stray water
molecules that strayed from my pull!}

{ and spin... Thus shattering into trillions of tiny sub microscopic
particles that would get pushed away from any approaching
raindrops!}

{ and spin, thus drilling into the soft crust of the world with my
impenetrable diamond hard cube of a body, until I reached the
molten core itself! Which it would then dry me off nicely! }

{ and spin... Thus grinding myself down to nothing but a pasty
powder against the rough, rock hard surface of the planet. Then I
just wouldn't care anymore! }

-Lou

[wossname]

Guv, since when has an insufficient number of dimensions stopped VB programmers?

Dim NewUniverse(0 to INFINITY,0 to INFINITY,0 to INFINITY,0 to INFINITY,0 to INFINITY,0 to INFINITY,0 to INFINITY) as Collection


For Each Thing in OldUniverse
NewUniverse(A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H).Add Thing
Call IncrementDimensions
Next Thing

Call Reboot(NewUniverse, StandardTessalatoryTemplate:=VBKleinBottle, BigCrunchPossible:=True)

[N€o]

Run like f***ing hell!
Try to stay ahead of the rain.
If the speed of the approaching rain is 100 kilometer or miles/hour and you are exactly 100 km or miles away from it, travel away from it with a speed that equals the rain / storm or whatever.
If it is greater you could possibly catch up with it.
That is IMHO.

put in simpler words:
if the speed and distance is the same then try to run away with exactly the same speed.

[Ph34R]

Killing yourself might get you out of having to put up with this crappy planet, but you would still get wet ;(

Their is one option however... since DavidHooper said we could run as fast as we want.

Run EXTREMELY fast, and fly off the face of the planet!

If you had a calculator, a notepad, and some sick need to re-visit the planet again, you could calculate how fast you would need to go, so that you only leave the atmosphere for one hour. (Let the gravity bring you down)

[shirtster]

and I thought I was the only loonie left alive ...

[kedaman]

nope, if you kill yourself, you die, that means you don't exist anymore, and therefore you don't get wet.

[Ph34R]

Ahh, i do remember something about "Negative velocity movement"

Where you arrive at your destination BEFORE you travel.
I read about it on a .gov site full of theoretical physics

Perhaps it is possible to use this in some way to avoid the rain, perhaps you appear at your destination, then make your trip to the destination after the rain has stopped?

[Ph34R]

kedaman, how do you figure?
Once you die, you dont disappear, your lifeless body will still remain in that horrid planet. It will still get wet!

Perhaps, you could start a fire that would help evaporate the rain while you burn your body to a very little pile of ash.

[Guv]

Ph34R: The epigrams in your signature are great. Did you make up the following or did you find some funky site masquerading as a govt technical site? I hope our govt does not believe in such nonsense.

Ahh, i do remember something about "Negative velocity movement" Where you arrive at your destination BEFORE you travel. I read about it on a .gov site full of theoretical physics

[kedaman]

Originally posted by Ph34R
kedaman, how do you figure?
Once you die, you dont disappear, your lifeless body will still remain in that horrid planet. It will still get wet!

Perhaps, you could start a fire that would help evaporate the rain while you burn your body to a very little pile of ash.

Do you argue that your body is still part of you when after you die? In that case we got a odd definitions.

[wossname]

We could either accept Kedaman's suicide plan, or we could re-define the problem, "What does the body do to keep itself dry?".

I'm currently wondering how you can kill yourself on a featureless planet without using the ground as a blunt instrument. I don't think anyone could strangle themselves to death without taking off their belt. If you take too long doing it, or try to drown yourself you have failed by default since you'll be wet after a short while.

[DavidHooper]

the cube can dig a hole right through the planet using his body and jump into it. the gravity will pull him (oscillating) to an eventual standstill in teh centre of the planet.

its very hot but he'll survive because he's is indestructible and all the rain will evaporate near the core.

[NotLKH]

Originally posted by NotLKH

{ and spin, thus drilling into the soft crust of the world with my
impenetrable diamond hard cube of a body, until I reached the
molten core itself! Which it would then dry me off nicely! }

-Lou

Been there, Done that!

[DavidHooper]

my mistake!

[DaoK]

nope, if you kill yourself, you die, that means you don't exist anymore, and therefore you don't get wet.

False, your body will be wet.

[Kaverin]

Well of course your body will get wet, but whether or not you get wet is dependent on which you perceive the real you to be: either the body (material), or the mind (immaterial). If you believe yourself to just be material, when you die, you still get wet. If you believe the real you to be the mind (whether or not they're intertwined, as that's another philosophical point), when you die, you leave, but the body isn't you, thus you don't get wet.

If all of that sounds weird, you'll probably find this funny: "Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language." -Ludwig Wittgenstein

[Ph34R]

I guess its all up to if you beleve in a god or something. I dont really like religous debates kedaman. Nobody ever wins, their is no way to tell who is correct. Not even suicide would give you a winnner, cus mabe you are unable to communicate thru those golden gates, or perhaps their was go afterlife, and your body simply dosent get up and say "I WAS RIGHT! haha!"

I beleve that once your body dies. thats it. End of the line. :P

I can see how others would beleve once you die, you go to heaven, or hell or where ever, and it wouldent be 'you' getting wey, but just some avatar.