The Boston Diaries

The ongoing saga of a programmer who doesn't live in Boston, nor does he even like Boston, but yet named his weblog/journal “The Boston Diaries.”

Go figure.

Sunday, April 02, 2006

Now, about Arlo Lipof's gold …

Yesterday I posted about cutting a square of gold in such a way that when reassembled, it appeared that you get more gold than you started with, and that it's related to the Banach-Tarski Paradox (which is a real mathematical theorm by the way).

I'm sorry to say that the cuts suggested won't generate any more gold (least everybody would be doing it and the price of gold wouldn't be anywhere near $585 an ounce (up $5 since yesterday I see). The Banach-Tarski Paradox works on mathematical cows, not real world matter. Had one actually cut gold as specified, you would still end up with 64 cubic inches of gold, with a slender 1 cubic inch gap in the middle. I remember as a kid spending a few hours proving that to myself (lots of algebra, slops, Y-intercepts, area of triangles, that type of stuff, all on a sheet of graph paper) because, you know, I wanted to make sure before asking the 'rents for $50,000.

Boy, talk about disappointing.

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