Search results for: “geek challenge”
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Geek Challenge: A Weighty Egg-sercise
During Easter basket arrangement, a mistake is noticed. One peanut-butter filled chocolate egg has been mixed into a group of 11 solid chocolate eggs. Fortunately, it is known that the peanut-butter egg has a different mass than the solid chocolate eggs (which are all the same). Also, a traditional balance scale is available to compare…
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Geek Challenge Results: Football Stadium Stumper
Last month’s Geek Challenge asked which football related activity used more energy: A. NFL Stadium Lighting for 3 hours B. Cooking 20,000 hotdogs C. Field heating to keep a football field unfrozen at an ambient temperature of 20 deg. F. We have concluded that the highest energy consumption, and correct answer is Stadium Lighting, A. Here is a…
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Geek Challenge: Football Stadium Stumper
January’s Geek Challenge comes just in time for Super Bowl XLV, where the players on the field won’t be the only ones burning energy. And the excitement of the NFC championship game that was held in Chicago got us thinking of some football related engineering. Which footballgame-relatedd activity consumes more energy? A. NFL stadium lighting for…
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Geek Challenge Results: Righting the Reindeer
We received several interesting responses to the Santa’s Reindeer problem. The best one was by Dave Montesano of IMAC Motion Control Corporation. What Dave did was recognized that the harness between and reindeer should be treated as a two force member, exerting only an equal and opposite force vector on each end and carrying no…
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Geek Challenge: Righting the Reindeer
Santa’s reindeer and sleigh in flight are typically drawn nearly horizontally like they would be if standing on the ground. However, the lift and thrust comes only from the reindeer. The sleigh, which is not wing-shaped, provides only weight and aerodynamic drag. The 8 reindeer are connected single-file to the sleigh, and each reindeer provides equal…
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Geek Challenge Results: Mind Swapping
Four people correctly answered last month’s Geek Challenge: Shanti Ahluwalia, Sanjay Sheth, Brian Page, and DMC’s own John Sullivan. The September DMC Geek Challenge was based on a recent episode of Futurama where a mind-switching machine had several of the characters minds and bodies switched up. However the machine could switch the same minds back…
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Geek Challenge: Mind-Swapping
Several TV shows vie for the title “Geekiest.” Our nominees are the original Star Trek, Dr. Who, and Battlestar Galactica. Among animated series none are as admired by geeks as Futurama, and the new season doesn’t disappoint. In a recent episode entitled “The Prisoner of Benda,” Professor Farnsworth and Amy completed their mind-switching machine. They…
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Geek Challenge: Constant G-Force Coaster Loops
Last month’s challenge was define the shape of a roller coaster loop that would create a constant G-force experience. We asked what shape to start with, and how to modify it to make the loop. To create a constant G-force loop, you can start with the basic shape of a circle. Traveling around a circle creates a…
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Geek Challenge: Rain Drop Density
DMC Newsletter Geek Challenge – May 2010: Devise and perform an experiment to determine the volumetric density of liquid water in the near-ground atmosphere during a hard rain. Simply put, if you could freeze time and collect all of the liquid water in a 1 cubic meter box of atmosphere at eye level during a…
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Fractal Snowflake Challenge:
The following snowflake is built using two recognizable fractal patterns: the Koch Snowflake and the Sierpinski Triangle. The final design is generated by a computer program and is comprised completely of small blue triangles. How many small blue triangles are in the image? You can download high-resolution versions of the snowflake in a .pdf. Also,…
