A Problem Squared - 022 = Serial Writing, Lineal Sighting, and Cereal Biting

Episode Date: August 31, 2021

What's the best way to stay inspired when writing? Where on earth can you look the furthest away at something else, that is also on the earth? When eating cereal, what is the milk? Sauce, broth, jus or something else? Plus! Repurposing crushed bike helmets: Can you, should you? 

Hello and welcome to A Problem Squared. If this podcast was the first Matrix movie, you, the listener, would be Neo, a computer nerd who seeks answers from strangers on the internet to avoid doing their actual job. I'm joined by our Morpheus, Matt Parker, who enjoys long-winded explanations, suits a shaved head, and is arguably the leader of a cult. And I'm the oracle, Beck Hill, in that my baseless advice is accurate but unhelpful. I work from home and I will encourage kids to break cutlery. I think that might be the best introduction ever. Like that was consistently good. It'd be even better if you started wearing glasses that didn't have frames. Oh, I should just suspend them.

I was going to say, I do enjoy watching old-timey televisions in a white void. So, you know, a lot of this lines up. I can't believe I never, never saw the similarities beforehand. Well, there you go. Welcome aboard, everyone. And I suspect a decent percentage of our listeners are doing this to avoid work. Yeah. So that's top notch.

I guess that makes our producer Lauren the architect. I imagine she looks like Colonel Sanders looking at a ton of screens. So she starts mysterious and becomes more and more contrived as the series goes on. Sorry, Lauren. She just said that spot on. Yeah, she agreed with us wholeheartedly. Do any of us get cut the fourth one when that's being made? I mean...

I wrote a fourth one. Did you? When I was like 14 or 15. Oh, that's amazing. Oh, it's great. We filmed it as well. It's all out of sequence. It's all on little tapes back at home.

It's remade with count. No, it wasn't even that clever. It was just us remaking it. The Nebuchadnezzar was the Mitsubishi Canoza, which was just my mum's car. And then when you went into the Matrix, you just put the seat back. Then we just put tapes into the tape deck

and we'd wrote like ninjutsu on them. So it's like, oh yeah. Oh, we were brilliant. Made sense. We did closing credits one time by filming a bit of paper and then using the dimmer switch on the lights in the room to fade in and out on names. Oh, that's really enjoyable.

I look at TikTok and I'm like, what? Kids these days. How do they do that thing? With their iMovies. Yeah. They must have spent ages with the VCR. Matt, what have you been up to in the last month? I have had people sending me mass things.

That's been the theme of my month. I thought that was your life normally. It is my life. But you know how I was discussing previously, I had too many videos in production and I'm trying to get them all out and I'm meant to be writing a book and all these other things.

And then I was like starting to come to the end of my videos and two people were just like oh here's a new prime number and someone else emailed me and said hey here's a new dodecahedron and i'm like people i'm trying to take a break you know what you can choose beck oh yeah do you want to hear about the new prime number someone sent me or do you want to hear about the new dodecahedron someone sent me there's your options i think i need the new prime number someone sent me or do you want to hear about the new decahedron someone sent me? There's your options. I think I need the new prime number because I'm not sure

why you wouldn't just know that. Yeah. Why aren't they just all known? It's a good question. They're not all known because there's a lot of them and they're very, very big. And so some people try to calculate the biggest possible prime number.

It's the big competition for who can find the biggest prime number. And there's always a bigger one. Like there's infinitely many of these things. People trying to find a bigger one, bigger one, bigger one. And actually, the one someone sent me is not the biggest one. They've got tens of millions of digits, the biggest primes were found. And we're overdue one. It's not quite the biggest gap ever,

but it's currently the second biggest gap in modern computing history between finding record-breaking prime numbers. And so I'm like, it's due any moment now. There's going to be another one. The audience can't see this, but a smile has just slowly been spreading across my face as I listen to this without any prior... Prime numbers.

However, the one that someone sent me is only 4,030 digits long, which is a big number, but it's reasonably small in terms of prime numbers. And people try to find in between ones because they have interesting properties. properties and i made a video about a thing called a widely digitally delicate prime number which is a prime number where if you change any of the digits it will no longer be a prime number if you change any of the digits to any other value it's guaranteed to now be a multiple of something it's no longer prime and that includes the infinitely many zeros at the beginning because all numbers have infinitely many lead zeros we just don't bother writing down only this year we managed to prove the existence of these numbers and there's infinitely many of them and they're consecutive and all these wonderful things but finding one is just beyond what's possible at

the moment and then in the video i'm oh, but we managed to prove they exist, but no one's ever found one. And then someone dropped me an email after my video went out and said, hey, I saw this research when it came out. I got curious about it. I got in touch with the authors of the paper, the people who did the maths. And I was like, oh, that's a bit annoying.

We haven't found one. Let's do it. And they did it. Someone found one. And I can't tell oh, that's a bit annoying. We haven't found one. Let's do it. And they did it. Someone found one. And I can't tell you how insane that is. 4,030 digits. Unbelievable. There you are.

You asked how things have gone for me. Great. Did they get it named after them? Well, you don't really name prime numbers. That's a good point. What's the point of finding them then? It's true. Why? Fame. You get to appear

in a stand-up math YouTube video. I mean, what more do people want? So it starts 903963 and then goes and goes and goes and goes. And the last digit is a 9. So I've ruined the ending. Yeah.

It ends 5399249. There you go. Let's just start typing at the beginning and see what happens. I've not even scrolled through to find my favourite bit. I mean...

I can't believe that I'm just lost in it now Matt stop looking at the number 3-0 So Beck what have you done this month that can possibly rival rival I found two prime numbers

Two? Whoa I stand down We interrupt this update to bring you an update. Hello, Bec Hill here. Just after we recorded this episode, I found out that my new Arts and Crafts TV show has an air date. Hooray! So I didn't want you guys to miss it in case you wanted to watch it.

It starts on CITV at 5.30pm on September the 6th so that's Monday, September the 6th at 5.30pm on CITV so please check it out that's Makeaway Takeaway and I'll let you get back to the show I'm sure Matt and I will talk about this more

in the next episode I just didn't want you to miss it Bye! How's your month been? In the back of the cupboard. Oh, Matt. I went to the most amazing Hindu. We were, this is the, well, almost the opposite of your month.

First of all, I should say, we were all incredibly, we all had our tests done, did all of the measures possible. All the things, yep. And we stayed in a decommissioned Royal Observer Corps bunker. A bunker? Like a headquarters. Like an underground. From like the Cold War. Like a nuclear bunker uh yeah well it was

there to observe uh if there were was nuclear bombs and stuff happening they would communicate with other bunkers and triangulate where the bombs had gone off don't try and distract me with triangles so when you you arrive can you see anything above ground? Is it like an above ground concrete structure? It's like a shed. Like a shed? It looks like a shed in the backyard. So you stayed in a shed? With like pebble cladding on it.

What a Hindu. But there is also, there's like a little hatch as well. You can go down the hatch, but the shed entrance is safer because there's steps. Oh, okay, okay, okay. I thought for a second you just had an airbnb which is like a pebble dash terraced house somewhere they're like oh no it's a it's a royal observing bunker it's a charitable organization and they're trying to restore this bunker using all of these old photos back when it was bunking but oh my gosh matt you would have

been in your element first time that sentence is true when said about a Hindu. Oh, they had this computer that they couldn't work out what language it talked in. So they're going to have to like teach it to speak another language to work out what the computer's used for. Oh my goodness. Because they actually. Don't taunt me. They had like light up, perspex, maps, graphs. So it's like a hands-on museum.

Sirens. And we stayed in these dorms in the actual bunker bunk beds. Bunker bunker bunk thing. It was like sirens. And we stayed in these dorms in the actual bunker bunk beds. It's not traditionally used for hen do something. But it was so much fun. We got to do this massive tour, find out loads about it. I got

safely inebriated. And at about 1am decided to make a scavenger hunt. Classic. Had a few drinks, Bec. And all the hens, they were well up for it. And I couldn't believe how much they remembered

because I'd stopped drinking. The bunk hunt. But they kept going. The bunk hunt. Maybe don't say that. Oh, okay. Weird. I'd like to say how disappointed I am

that I was not invited. Not to the hen do, just to come and see the computer. We might have to. Yeah. Perhaps we should arrange some sort of a problem squared recording. One location from the bunker. Oh my goodness. Yeah.

I mean, I'm always hesitant to over promise for fear of under delivering, but I really feel like i don't want to put a time frame on it but let's do it speak your podcast on this episode writing tips citing tips biting tips best menu ever our first problem was sent in by one of our Patreon supporters on the problem posing page at aproblemsquared.com. James here is very concise with their problem.

They simply say, how to avoid burning out with writing and ways to keep it fun and interesting. And then there's no full stop at the end. There's no punctuation. James got bored writing that sentence. So I sense this is a pressing issue. And Beck, I believe you've got a solution. Yes, I do.

I do have a solution because Matt, you and I, we both write a lot. It's part of our job. Professional authors. Yeah. Well, I mean, my books haven't come out yet. By the time you're listening to this, it's a month away until my book comes out. Very exciting. I've now switched.

Sometimes if I'm asked what I do for a living, like at customs or immigration, I say author. It's just a much quicker answer than any other way to describe what I do for a living. What are the other things that you've said? Maths teacher is a good one, but then there's often questions and I feel like that's bordering on lying. People ask questions to math teachers? Given how long it's been since I was a real teacher. I'd be like, okay, don't tell me anything else.

Oh, you'd be amazed. Keep going. No, no. Well, you would not make a good immigration officer. I've had... Or do they test you? The ones in Australia have told me off for not teaching in Australia anymore. People in the UK have asked me for advice for their kids

A-level choices. Ones in America have asked why I'm here, if it's when are the holidays. A lot of follow-on questions for a maths teacher. And so author, nothing. So for me, when i'm writing because i started out writing scripts that's my background and that's a lot easier for me to write because i write predominantly for children's animated shows which are normally somewhere between 7 and 16 minutes long i mean even if a full episode is nearing half an hour, they're normally made up of two smaller episodes. So SpongeBob was always that way.

You've always got sort of two shorter ones. And I don't really get as bored writing them because they're short. So you can sort of, you know, you can bosh out a first draft in a day and then the rest is just tweaking. So that's really enjoyable. But these books that I'm writing at the moment, the Horror Heights books, they're still relatively short by book standards. How many words? Just over 20,000. But they're narratives, which is...

Wow. 20,000. To me, that's a lot, Matt. He's giving me this real smug grin. And I'm being a real smug jerk, but I'll be honest, I couldn't do it. Because my books are between 80 and 120,000. Yeah, but I could write that if I was just saying the truth. Try lying.

Well, this is it, see? Bingo. I know. And I think fiction 20 is the equivalent of nonfiction 200. I say lying. I should actually clarify. Exchange rate. These books are actually based on true stories,

but I've decided to fictionalize them, which is just as difficult because then you're trying to create this atmosphere by putting the reader in the moment. So you're sort of having to think about what was really happening at the time and how it all worked. And also what the truth might be, because honestly, these stories are all based on largely reports and hearsay. So who knows?

Yeah. No, not me. I'm just fact, fact, fact, fact, fact, fact fact fact fact that's me typing just banging out facts occasionally deducing a new fact leaving a fact for the reader to work out themselves yeah piece of cake so for me personally the first book i found very easy to write and then later realized how many mistakes i'd made and then had to sort of fix it. Arguably, you hadn't finished writing it yet. Yeah. Yeah. Because you think it's just starting from the beginning and then finishing writing is saying the end, but it's not. It's in the twigs. I've realized that writing is essentially making something broken very quickly

and then spending a long time fixing it. Yeah, but you need to start with something to hone. The problem is that if you spend ages trying to have it perfect, you'll spend more time doing that, trying to get it perfect you'll spend more time doing that trying to get it perfect the first time around than just as just accepting that it's broken and if we're generalizing to just generic writing advice as opposed to keeping it exciting well maybe this helps for me it does in terms of keeping it exciting is i know the first not even draft but the first phase of writing for me is just generating words.

And I find that very liberating. It's like collecting all the Lego pieces so that you could actually make the thing out of Lego. Exactly. And a lot of the time, if you are worried about it being good or you're not quite sure, it'll stifle you. You'd be trapped. You'd be paralyzed for wanting to make it perfect.

And it stops it from being fun. Yeah. Because when I think about it, for me, like, I love playing pool or darts. Like, I love bar games, pub games. Okay. Bit of a segue. But Karen? I'm not good at those things.

Oh. I'm all right. But what will usually happen is I'll have a couple of shots at the beginning, either at pool, not the drinks. I mean, I'll have a go at either pool or darts, and I'll do surprisingly well. And people go, oh, and then it's all downhill from there. And then I will. I don't think we've ever played pool.

I don't think we have. We've played table tennis in a bar. We have, yeah. That's probably the same as well. Most games I will do okay the first. I'll start strong and then I will lose. Card games, anything, I will lose. But I'm okay with that because my confidence in myself doesn't lie in my ability to play pool or darts.

I know that I'm good at other things. pool or darts I know that I'm good at other things and I think writing needs to be approached with very much the same feeling which is that you have to be okay to technically lose sometimes the book will be winning yeah exactly exactly and then you know later you can sort of go oh how should I have done that and that's when you get but that's the that's the great thing about it you know is that you get to go back and do that and fix it later so that's uh that's one piece of advice I've got a few other little ones which are probably just more suited to me but anyone listening they might find it interesting yeah sometimes I'll wear different colored like you know the 3d glasses this yeah is specific to you right wow yeah um I'll wear different coloured, like, you know, 3D glasses. This is specific to you. Right, wow.

I'll switch up the font. Oh, whoa. Love switching up the font. I have never in my life switched up the font. Oh, have you ever written in Comic Sans? I have every single book I've written has been written in Verdana, without exception. That doesn't surprise me. Imagine writing in Comic Sans.

written has been written in verdana without exception that doesn't surprise me imagine writing in comic sans uh well comic sans was was created to help people with dyslexia the point is that the letters aren't completely symmetrical so that your eyes are able to differentiate them more easily obviously sometimes people use comic sans because they see the word comic and they're like oh that applies to either comedy yeah or comic books and they're wrong but but other times you'll see it used in in certain other things and it is because it is easier to read yeah yeah you're on board so i've written in comic sans a few times i've done that good advice another thing that i've been doing to make writing more fun and this is very specific to me but might be interesting to some other people I bought a an onyx books which is an e-ink tablet oh on some of their tablets you can connect

a bluetooth keyboard so I've actually been writing the entire book too with my e-ink tablet on landscape and I bought a bluetooth keyboard that clackety clacks like a typewriter yep you just go to clackety clack clack and then yeah it feels like you're typing on a typewriter but you can delete stuff I very much enjoy it and it does make writing a lot more fun makes it feel a bit more special magical tactile yeah yeah yeah so i think things like that they make they make writing more fun i have a bunch of like fidget toys and it's probably the fact that i'm not writing much at the moment i look here and often i've got a nerf gun within um range or like juggling balls or something like things i can just play with and i like to throw. I don't know why, but for some reason when I'm writing, I like to throw things in the air and catch them.

That just kind of tactile movement. That's what I do. I don't know why that, for some reason. I've got a fidget spinner. Yeah, that kind of stuff. It keeps my brain... I can concentrate for longer if I'm messing around physically at the same time.

And leaning right back in my chair. This is my writing position like this. I'm like, yeah. Matt's leaning back. What should I, what facts should I put in next? He's leaning so far back. I can see he's not wearing any trousers, which is a callback to I'm a wizard.

A callback to the other podcast. No context. That's how you keep running exciting. References to things. Yeah, in jokes. In jokes. That's what it keeps. To be fair, putting in jokes in something does make it more fun

and makes it feel more special. I think it's very much about doing the things that would excite you as a kid and making it more fun that way, making it feel like a special adventure. And in terms of to avoid burning out, which was one other thing that James mentioned, and I'll finish up on this, is that you shouldn't really write for more than three or four hours at a time, which is advice that I've been given by several authors. And I'm inclined to agree. I find what tends to happen is if I start to write over four hours, I will then write at about 15% of the productivity that I was at for the first four. And you need to do that because then you're not exhausting yourself of everything that you have.

You know, it's like, it's a common term I've referred to a few times, but it's filling the well, which is the idea that you draw from the well when you're writing but if you don't take time to refill it you've got nothing to draw out anymore so you'll lower your groundwater table yeah yeah stop go outside go for a walk spend the rest of the day doing other things because when you come back the next day you'll be five times more productive i forget where i first saw this advice but i've been using it a lot and it's to stop writing when you're excited oh because the temptation is to keep writing writing writing until you come grinding to a hole you're like oh my well is empty and i'm out and i'll stop when i'm excited and i will make a few bullet points like oh then i could i could do this and this and this and i'll i'll bang them a few bullet points. I'm like, oh, then I could do this and this and this

and I'll bang them out as bullet points. So then when I start the next day, I'm like, oh, I remember where I was. I wanted to do these things. And then you're straight back into it. Do you do any structural planning? I don't early on all the structures in my head and I just generate words. But each concept goes into a post-it note.

And the post-it notes go into a wall, which I'm looking at now, which is deeply unhelpful for anyone. But anyway, some post-it notes that aren't behind the sound baffling. And so I then physically will structure the book, moving those post-it notes around in the next phase. That's how I write stand-up shows. Yeah, I find that works. I probably did pick it up from doing stand-up. And then That's how I write stand-up first. But that's only once I've got enough content. Yeah. I find that works. Yeah. I probably did pick it up from doing stand-up, and then that's how I do structure books.

But I feel like we've gone into a lot of information there. So, James, I hope that helps. Give us a shout if you think it's a ding. Also, get back to writing. Our next problem comes from Lois. I might be mispronouncing that because there is an umlaut in Lois' name. So apologies if that's incorrect. Lois.

Lois. Lois. We'll just go with Lois and we apologize if that's wrong. And the problem is, it's easy to look at a star that is light years away. But I was wondering where on earth you can look the furthest away at something that is also on earth as in what's the longest line between two points on earth that doesn't go through the earth and where are those two points i mean that's a great question yeah i mean the first bit's an understatement that it's easy to see a star that's light years away. Like, more accurately, it's difficult. Like, it's impossible to see a star that's not light years away.

Yeah, right. Yeah. Because all stars, excluding the sun, pedants, all stars are between 4,000 and 4,000 light years away. Could you argue that everything is light years away, but just some of them are very small? On average. Very, very small increments. Yeah, on average, everything is light years away? But just some of them are very small. On average. Very, very small.

Yeah, on average, everything is light years away. Yeah. And the Milky Way is like over 100,000 light years across. Maybe it's like 140,000 light years across. And we can only see stars which are like 4,000 light years away. So we can only see very close by stars. It just so happens that very close in space is light years. And this is without apparatus.

But this is naked eye. This is just with the human eye. Human eye. So obviously you can see the sun. That's pretty straightforward. And then you can see several thousand stars that are all many, many light years away. And then it did make me think,

I kind of, this is not the actual question that Lois asked, but I was thinking, well, how far away, like what's the most distant object you can see with your own eyeball, unaided, just staring at the sky, and it's the Andromeda galaxy. A blip? I said a blimp.

A blimp. Yeah, no, obviously a blimp is a long way away. I just said a blip. The reason I did double take is you are 100% correct if you'd said blip. What? Because actually we can see more distant objects, but not all the time. Because if a supernova goes off in an even more distant galaxy, that's visible to the naked eye. But it just blips.

It's on and then it's off. Is that its actual terminology, a blip? No, but it's a very good description. Can we get it to be one? It should be called a blip. Your wife would be able to put that forward. I know people. I'll get Lucy onto it.

Yeah, so. No, no, no, I'm serious. Can we get that done? Can we get someone on that right? We did a teaspoon of trouble. We did the coronavirus thing. We did a new big press thing. A blip.

I wonder. Supernovas seen with the naked eye is called a blip. You heard it here first, folks. Actually, now I say it out loud. I know some supernovas you see for quite a while. I don't know what the fastest supernova is. Yeah, well,eps just more eyes in the bleep got it yeah yeah that's like a 17 eye supernova bleep so the question now is like what's the greatest distance thing you can always it's there and you can see it all the time versus these temporary bleeps when a supernova

goes off a very very long way away but we're talking millions millions of light years with the naked eye incredible lois's question however like obviously it's easy to look a long way away in space because there's nothing in the way and it's dark what about something on earth and that kind of depends on how tall you are because the taller taller you are, the further away the horizon is. What? And the horizon, by definition, is just how far can you see? Like the horizon's just, I can't see any further.

That's the end. And the taller you are, the more horizon you get. Or the more distant the horizon. Wait. So if I was to stand in the same place as you on a beach, like I stood in where your footsteps were on the sand. Yep. I looked at the horizon. I'm looking at a different horizon that you were looking at.

Yep. And yours would be less impressive for you are shorter than I. Oh, that's, wait a minute. There might be something right on the edge of mine yeah but i would see your horizon and my horizon i'd see the whole yeah and this actually you know what you kid but very early on in my relationship with lucy this is like the first time we went to australia we were both on the beach and we were looking out over the ocean which is just a superior experience in australia yeah

and lucy said out loud that was her first mistake i wonder how far away the horizon is which is basically the same question like how far are we looking what's the greatest distance um that we can see right now and i was like we can work this out. And so I got like a stick and like the sand was quite smooth. And so I honestly, in the sand. You wrote a poem, a romantic poem. No, I did a diagram. I sketched out the sun. I sketched out the earth and I labeled the radius of the earth.

And we had to estimate it. We didn't want to look anything up. So it's about 6,000 kilometers. So you drew a circle and then you drew a dot inside it yeah you drew a boob just the one just the one boob and then i then i then i connected the nipple out as a ray and then i drew the height of the person honestly yeah this was our romantic moment like this is before we were married This is way back in the day. You kids in your hormones. Did some Pythagoras.

Did some very rough working out and calculated for about our height. The horizon is about five kilometers away. Three miles for Imperial people. Five kilometers for us romantics. Obviously, Lucy double checked afterwards. And I was about right. So you impressed her with the calculations she impressed you with her need for clarification rigorous fact checking yeah yeah absolutely so it's about it's about 5k to the horizon if you're about two meters tall but i've now got a spreadsheet here so i can put in. I'm 1.84 meters tall.

So my personal horizon is 4.8 kilometers away. My personal horizon is my favorite punk band. How tall are you, Bec? If you don't mind sharing. I think you've shared this previously on the podcast. I have, yeah. 165 centimeters. 1.65. Boom.

Your horizon to the nearest meter says about four and a half kilometers. Just ballpark. Specifically, where the ocean perfectly smooth and you're standing at exactly sea level, you'll be able to see 4,585 meters away. Wow. So there you go. Four and a half K. And then I'd see a little bit further.

The thing now is the higher you get the further you can see yeah to a point like you can only ever see half a sphere so if you're infinitely far away from the earth then you'll be able to see all of one half and the closer you get the closer you can see You can see half of it. The half closest to you. So if you were... No, if you were standing on the North Pole, at what point can you see the South Pole? You can't, ever. Yeah, but that's half of it, isn't it?

Well, you could be able to see the top half. You'd be able to see everything from the equator up. So if you're at the North Pole... Oh, yeah, right. Because you see a quarter from one side and a quarter from the other. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah, you're thinking sides. Because you see a quarter from one side and a quarter from the other. Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah.

You're thinking sides. I'm forgetting that someone can turn around and look behind them. Yeah. So if you're at the North Pole and you start getting higher and higher and higher up while looking down. Yeah. If you were infinitely far away, you'll see the equator. But if you're any closer, you just see a smaller section of the Earth. Yeah, yeah.

And so that's kind of how far away you can see. Although that said, if there's something tall behind the horizon, you can see that. And that's just the same maths in reverse. Like when someone with a big hat sits in front of you, they get in the way. Exactly like when someone, they get in the way. And if you tried to shield them with a horizon their hat would stick over the horizon yeah so if you were at the beach back and you're looking out the horizon and you couldn't see someone because they're on on a boat on the other side and then they put a

hat on you'd be like oh my goodness well they i can see them now and i'll be like well i can see them the whole time because my horizon was better yeah and then um we'll be back in that whole thing again so i did this is this sketch I showed you this before we started recording. And you said we have to put this on social media. Have you put this into your calculations? At what point can the human eye not tell what a thing is? Oh, I have not. Because it can't just be height.

It should also be like just how big it is in general. I have not factored in being able to resolve it the human eye and this is me just remembering my astronomy from university you can see down to about one photon per second that's where you'll register oh there's a thing there so i haven't done any kind of spatial can you resolve detail i'm just worried about can you see it like oh there's a thing there there's not a thing there but i wouldn't be able to see someone with a hat because they would be too small if they had a very bright hat or they had like a mirror on their hat that reflects the sun you'd see a glint i have not affected in the shininess of the hat into any of my calculations yeah if they had a disco hat i'm

gonna yeah put that put that calculation online and send it to me because i'm gonna put the addition of a disco hat please do you can do that yeah and all this is is the more precise version of what i did for lucy at the beach what you did is you worked out if people go high they see far okay you say anything in that kind of voice it sounds really obvious we've been through the spreadsheet i can tell you exactly how far you can see and i scaled it up straight away so i figured well what what's what's the max and lois specified on earth i figured if you build something up to space that's probably cheating oh so you're you're gonna count like buildings and stuff yeah it's not yeah people's feet yeah

exactly so if you were at like the the line roughly where space starts so you're slightly higher than where richard branson went you can see just over 2 000 kilometers in every direction you can see about 2 300 kilometers from from the iss sideways and And like Australia, the US, and actually Europe's not far off, are all about 4,000 kilometers across. And Australia and the States are pretty much the same. Then I was like, wait a minute,

this kind of makes sense because from the ISS, you can't see all of Australia. Like when the ISS goes over Australia, they can just see red dirt in every direction. And all the kind of classic photos of the Earth we picture when you think of the view from space, they're like Apollo-era ones where we went a lot further away and then got the photo. Wait a minute.

So you're quite close up. No, there's been more recent photos of Earth than Apollo, as in like the Discovery and stuff. Not the Discovery, but... You just picked a name of a satellite. You know. Well, you know, they've gone further than... They definitely have, but I don't know if they've turned a camera back at the Earth.

Okay, so Lauren said the NASA is a new pick-em-by. Discover. Discover, see? I was so close as well. You new figure by Discover. Discover, see? I was so close as well. You were so close. You made fun of me. No, yeah, you're right. That got all of the Earth in the one shot.

The Deep Space Climate Observatory. I take it all back, Beck. I want to see it now. It's stunning. It's bringing a tear to my eye. But I feel like we've now ironically moved too far away from the original question, which was on Earth. Bring us back to Earth, Matt.

So I thought I would just do buildings already built. The tallest building is the Baj Khalifa. In Dubai? Is in Dubai, yep. And it is unbelievably 828 metres tall. Like it's a kilometre high rounded to the nearest kilometre. It's just insane insane over half a mile up so if you were at the top of it 828 meters up you can see 103 meters away that's how far away

the horizon is and i was like that's a long way and so i had a look on a map to see what can you what's 100 kilometers away from dub. And there's not much. But then I realized Abu Dhabi is not that much further away. And so I looked up what the tallest building in Abu Dhabi is. And it's the Bajmohamed bin Rashid. And that, I mean, it sounds small now. It's 381 meters. That is still a huge building.

I'll make that very, very clear. It's still nearly 400 meters up. That's like 231 becks. So then I worked out if you were at the top of the tallest tower in Abu Dhabi, you could see 70 kilometers in every direction. Which means if there was something on the ground 70 kilometers from Abu Dhabi and 103 kilometers from Dubai and the two towers are only 122 kilometers apart which means technically there's a direct line of sight from the top of the Bajj Khalifa in Dubai to the top of the Bajj Mohammed bin Rashid

in Abu Dhabi. And so then I drew another diagram. And again, it's a rough approximation of those two towers. Again, no hats. You've made the earth very small. I have. Do you know why I picked it that size? It's for a very specific reason reason is it because otherwise it's essentially a straight line no it's because i was using the inside of this roll of tape as my um stencil too not good at drawing circles so um so anyway i calculated and this is just kind of back of the envelope or back of the piece of paper your line of sight from one to the other would clear the ground by over 200 meters, about 260 or so. And I think now we're within the tolerances of the size I'm estimating the earth is, like the radius of the earth, and it's different at

different places. So if you use exactly 6,371 kilometers of area of the earth, then you've got a good 260 meter clearance off the ground. It's not going to be that. But I feel like that's enough of a safety that there should be a direct line between the top of these two towers. Now, I have been to Dubai. The tower didn't exist when I was there last. I messaged a friend of mine who not only went up the tower, but was allowed to put on some abseiling kit and climb out of the very top. And I don't know if they were allowed to. They were there filming a thing.

It's a guy called Dallas Campbell. You know what? I'll throw him in it. Was it to do with Mission Impossible? Sadly, no. It was like a documentary about cool buildings. Dallas makes amazing TV shows. And so I messaged him and said,

hey, I don't suppose you remember if you could see Abu Dhabi from the top of the tower while you were up there? And he's replied to say he doesn't remember. He says, most of my attention was on other things. I remember thinking, holy

expletive, this is really, really high. Direct quote. I've swapped out the word expletive though. So anyway, he says he remembers seeing lots of desert, but he can't recall seeing anything in the distance. He just saw desert as far as you could see. I looked online and there's like one tourist review where someone says they weren't able to see Abu Dhabi.

They tried and they couldn't. But now you're coming into your point. Like, what can you see? Like, is the tower bright enough at night? Maybe it's lit. And also, would air quality become an issue? Totally. Because you tend to get more smog as you go higher.

The sand and dust off the desert in the air, then that'll block your view. The sand and dust off the desert in the air, then that'll block your view. So the answer is technically the longest distance would be between these two towers in the United Arab Emirates. However, by all reports, both tourists on the observation deck and my friend Dallas terrified outside the top of the tower, it's not actually visible. But in theory, in optimal conditions, it would be. You don't think the light pollution from closer to you would get in the way of that? I think it would. I think in perfect viewing conditions,

you would just be able to see some light coming from it. Now, I have not factored in the light being bent by the atmosphere. I've done all of this calculating straight line distances. This is purely hypothetical, but in theory, that's the longest distance you would be able to see without the light curving in the atmosphere. What if it was not a man-made building, but it was your feet on the ground?

Are there two mountains that you could stand on that you would see from further away than if you're standing on a beach looking at the horizon? Oh, that is an interesting question. How far in a mountain range? You need to find two isolated mountains because the in-between ones would get in the

way for the viewing line. Hmm. You know what? I'm open to suggestions. If anyone... I've gone for two human-made towers, but if anyone thinks they can locate mountains or somewhere else with a greater distance apart. Somewhere natural.

Yeah, I'm okay with that. So, Lewis, let us know if that's a ding. And if it's not, any listeners who know of a place with two mountains more than five kilometres away from each other, then let us know. You go to the problem posing page, which is ourproblemsquared.com, and select solution.

Beck, an individual named Doug has a problem with eating cereal. They say when eating cereal, what is the milk? Question mark. They then offer some options. Sauce, broth, juice, or something else? Question mark. It's pronounced jus.

Jus. Sorry. French. Sorry, I'll pronounce it again. Sauce, broth, French sauce, or something else? Question mark. So there you are. What a problem facing Doug in the morning.

Yeah. Yep. Did some research. It's milk. Solid. Wow. I don't know why Doug needs to. It's milk. Solid. Wow. I don't know why Doug needs to. It's milk.

Firstly, it's not broth or gravy even. It's none of those things. Or soup. Because those all involve boiling the ingredients to get the flavor out of them. Traditionally, they all start with the bones or the fat. Yep. So depending on what the uh and what the thing is it's not a stock either because a lot of them it's about deriving the the flavor

from boiling it and unless you're boiling your cereal and milk which i suppose i mean then that's porridge isn't it that's what you've done is you've made porridge yeah you're not going to get that. A sauce you sort of make out of a variety of ingredients to make the sauce. Whereas with cereal and milk, you're not putting the milk in there to make the milk into another thing. It's just milk. So I think the closest I could come to was that it's a bit like cold brew tea. Cold brew tea. But where you eat the thing. You eat the tea.

The cereal is the tea in your analogy. Yeah. But where you're eating the thing. But that's why I think it's just milk. Is there any other meal where you immerse what you want to eat in a liquid just for the sake of eating it? Short of putting a pie in some soup. Okay's custard that's what it is it's custard it's custard but what but there's there's like a category for things like milk or custard or stuff that you just pour on it i mean i suppose you could say a custard sauce yeah custard's pretty saucy in that sense yeah in that

sense maybe you're close to a sauce, but a sauce you tend to make out of something. Like a sauce is made of a lot of different ingredients, whereas milk is milk. So the problem with milk is it's only one ingredient, which means it's an ingredient,

not a sauce. So what you want to do is add some stuff to it and then put it over your cereal. You got yourself a sauce. This reminds me a lot of those arguments like, is a hot dog a sandwich? And a lot of the time, all these things is the answer is if you have to ask the question, the answer is no. Like if it's even a question, then no, it's not. So I feel like it's not a sauce.

It's milk. It's milk. It's milk it's a hot dog it's a hot dog it's a hot dog clause i wore up for any aob business excellent a lot of people have sent in suggestions for what i can do with my broken bike helmet. So last episode I mentioned I had an accident on my bicycle. You're not supposed to reuse a helmet once it's been in a crash. It's now been damaged. We're going to upcycle your bicycle helmet. That's it.

I was going to just throw it out. And you're like, no, upcycle the bicycle helmet. It has a much better ring to it. And so we opened it up and the most popular suggestion by far was to turn it into a hanging basket so just it's already got a strap it's got like holes i guess for drainage you just suspend it upside down and put a plant in there some dirt in whang some jack some dirt in there you're in business However, I'm a bit more partial To something sent in by John

John says, because they used to race bicycles And so they were in You know, more crashes than they appreciated Probably an above average number of crashes They said whenever they Had a damaged helmet, they would return it to the Manufacturer with a description Of what happened

So this way, they could use that as like data for like real world tests of their helmets so now they know like it was in an actual accident this is what happened they can have a look at the helmet to see how it responded and what happened and all that and not only are you providing important data and helping research the safety of helmets, which alone, I mean, I'm already interested. John then says the manufacturers would be so grateful they'd give them a discount on their replacement helmet. So I have already ordered my replacement. In fact, I've got it and I've worn it while cycling. But I think that's amazing.

And so I am going to do that. I'm going to post it. I guess I just write a handwritten note. Here's what happened. Tuck it in the helmet. Pop it in the post. Stick a stamp on it. Stamp right on the helmet.

Pop a flower in for good luck. Put PS, feel free to use it as a hanging basket once you're done. That seems to be the most popular option. Put some seeds in the sweaty foam bits in the inside See if they sprout while it's on its way Exactly So there you go So that's a great suggestion

I'm glad I listened to you Beck And I didn't throw it out straight away I'm going to send it back to the manufacturer And regale them with the tale Of how I fell off my bicycle I might just include a link to the previous episode Yeah just send them a link. Listen to episode 021.

That's all you need. Here's the helmet. You have to let us know how you get on. Have fun. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed it, please remember to tell your friends, share links, give us reviews, whatever it is. You can also subscribe to us on Patreon

if you want to help us out financially. And if you have any problems or solutions, you can log them at aproblemsquared.com. We'll be tweeting about some of the stuff we've discussed in this show, also posting on Instagram, and we'll be asking for your advice on some of these as well. So if you'd like to know what other people do to keep writing fun and interesting, or how other people eat their cereal or anything like that, check us out at A Problem Squared, and let's get a conversation going. Or indeed, if you're a Patreon supporter,

you can chat about it there. And just before we go, if people do want to see the new Dodecahedron, it'll be on my YouTube channel. Some closure there for everyone. Oh, and finally, Beck, in just the chat on our video call, uh, here's,

oh, it won't let me paste that prime number. Oh, I went and got, I've got all 4,030 digits. It's just making an error noise. what a shame. Oh no.

You are missing it. Don't worry. I'll email it to you afterwards. Thanks again for our wonderful producer, Lauren Armstrong Carter. And to me. Hey, Beck. Is this your card?

I forgot what my card was. Oh, my.