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It must be so fun to have a Dad that entertains your foolish ideas as a child, and play them out in immense detail for you :) I hope I can be that Dad one day.
I would imagine that what the five year old who asked wanted was an intuitive sense of how far away the moon is. My answer would have been far less interesting. I would assume a reasonable rate at which a child slides down a pole, say 1 meter per second, multiplied by roughly 384,000km from the moon to Earth, and it would take a little over 12 years.
I had a discussion with some 4 years old about fire extinguisher and why there were 2 at the nursery. My simple explanation was disappointing to one and I learned from his mom that it ended up looking the various type of firetruck and what number of what type of fire extinguisher they were carrying as well as the various hose option, the different type of fire and the various safety labels on product helping determining the type of fire they produce, ...
The others where also unhappy with the few details I provided, it seems "there is a big one and a smaller one" was what they were expecting.
I would imagine that what the five year old who asked wanted was an intuitive sense of how far away the moon is. My answer would have been far less interesting. I would assume a reasonable rate at which a child slides down a pole, say 1 meter per second, multiplied by roughly 384,000km from the moon to Earth, and it would take a little over 12 years.
Let me guess - your favorite map projection is Goode Homolosine. You like easy solutions. You think we wouldn't have so many problems if we'd just elect normal people to Congress instead of Politicians. You think airlines should just buy food from the restaurants near the gates and serve that on board. You change your car's oil, but secretly wonder if you really need to.
I would imagine that what the five year old who asked wanted was an intuitive sense of how far away the moon is. My answer would have been far less interesting. I would assume a reasonable rate at which a child slides down a pole, say 1 meter per second, multiplied by roughly 384,000km from the moon to Earth, and it would take a little over 12 years.
(Sorry for saying the (possibly) obvious.)
And this is what makes it wonderful.
Reading these makes me very happy, I'm so grateful Mr Munroe is still working on them.
I seem to have a category in my brain for cool, creative internet stuff that will last as long as it lasts, but probably won't be replaced by the modern internet.
Anyway.. these days.. xkcd would be starting on Twitter, FB or pictogram. Back then it was blogrolls and Reddit. The medium is the message and the discovery channel is the medium, I think.
Actually, the person sliding the pole would be like an object changing orbit. Remember, Moon orbits Earth. Even at L1 you can't just push yourself and coast along the pole. The movement along the pole is changing orbits and as we know this requires energy. In this case if you push yourself along the pole you would suddenly find yourself drifting away from it.
That's of course if you could create a rigid pole. As every piece of the pole would be on a different orbit there would be huge forces acting on the pole.
> There's one more problem: The Moon doesn't always stay the same distance from Earth. Its orbit takes it closer and farther away. Then use a pole that is strong enough to eliminate this problem.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What material would you suggest is strong enough to handle the orbit of two massive bodies (relative to girth of a poll one could realistically hold onto)? And what do you suppose the consequences of altering the moons orbit would be? Something with elasticity would be a better option than something that is strong but even that wouldn't resolve some of the other issues presented; such as the moons surface not being g…
> such as the moons surface not being geostationary to any point on the Earth. The pole would also solve that problem ...