What Time Is It?
Science brain teasers require understanding of the physical or biological world and the laws that govern it.
In the year 2100, a family went out into space for a vacation exactly one light-minute away from home. They used an advanced telescope to look at their clock. The child, Sam, was so exact at time. If it's 9:59, he stays up one minute until ten. One night, Sam looked through the telescope and saw the clock showed 9:59. But his dad said it was ten and he had to go to sleep. How is that possible?
The clock back at home was their ONLY time source.
HintThink about the properties of light.
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Answer
The clock was one light-minute away, so it took the light one minute to reach the telescope. The display was how it looked one minute ago. You have to add one minute, and therefore it was Sam's bedtime.
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Comments
Pizzazz2u   
Sep 14, 2006
| Good wording! I can enjoy puzzles similar to this one. Keep them coming and add a few more tricks to them.  |
sayaah92 
Sep 14, 2006
| Liked it a lot!!!  |
scallio
Sep 15, 2006
| A bit easy... thanks for the morning tease.
 |
ruroken
Sep 15, 2006
| Liked it a lot. Make some more like this one. |
eelliott2
Sep 22, 2006
| yawn... |
vbguy101
Sep 25, 2006
| Got a trick teaser coming on, "The Flag". It's pretty interesting. Check it out.
Once it gets accepted! |
vbguy101
Sep 29, 2006
| Well, you won't be seeing it...
it got rejected
As of 9/29/06 |
MalcolmReynolds
Oct 14, 2006
| I think you could have worded it so that you didn't outright say "light minute." Of course, if your intention was to make it simpler, then I take that back. |
flamehead
Oct 18, 2006
| Kinda easy.  |
eamon
Oct 19, 2006
| Try to reword the teasers so they don't make the clues so obvious. Keep trying. |
rkaaland
Oct 19, 2006
| I thought it was a great way to introduce the effect of light travel! Good Job! |
shdwhawk 
Oct 31, 2006
| Rather obvious and simple. |
(user deleted)
Nov 03, 2006
| ,,,,=^..^=,,,,? (='.'=)? |
stil
Dec 05, 2006
| I think I solved this twelve light-seconds before I read it.  |
PuzzledManiac
Dec 11, 2006
| this was easy... thanks |
lavender
Dec 24, 2006
| COOL! Keep up the good work! |
amb1912
Jan 04, 2007
| that was cool i got it but it took more then a sec |
MelkorDCLXVI
Mar 05, 2007
| very easy but nice story |
dachshund2k3
Mar 09, 2007
| My eighth grade science teacher told us a story like this, something to the effect of "If aliens, 250 light-years away, looked at Earth through a telescope, they would see the American Revolution."
This sparked my question (which was never answered), "If these aliens had advanced spaceships that could travel at 99.99% of the speed of light (because nothing can travel at the speed of light) directly toward Earth, while maintaining a view of Earth's surface in their special telescope, would they see time on Earth passing a twice (199.99%) of normal speed?" This creates a paradox (he told me) because light cannot travel faster than the speed of light. Maybe someone smart here can help me. |
Black_Beard_Guy
Apr 15, 2007
| I think it has something to do with that Einstein's stuff. |
Kamazar
Jun 10, 2007
| Yeah, Einstein's law of relativity. I know it has all the complicated symbols that hopefully I'll understand someday, but basically, all it states is that if you move fast enough, everything will appear as if it's standing still (hard to explain here), and somehow...it is...standing still. Uuuuh...hmmmm...but if it took know time at all to go one light minute away...errrr...but did they travel forward in time in that light minute? Argh!!!
P.S. Has anyone seen that old Superman movie where Superman find Lois Lane dead, and he circles the earth really fast to go back in time? |
Kamazar
Jun 10, 2007
| *No, not know. Sorry for the double post. |
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