A Problem Squared - 035 = Lunar Cheese Pops and Physics Bullet Drops

Episode Date: June 6, 2022

In THIS episode...   * How long would it take us to eat the moon if it was made of cheese?   * If you shot and dropped a bullet at exactly the same time, they would hit the ground simultaneously?   * And Bec and Matt give thanks.   As always, if you've got a problem or a solution, hit us up on our website aproblemsquared.com. And if you want want even more from A Problem Squared, find us on Twitter and Instagram.

Welcome to episode 035 of A Problem Squared, a podcast where we set sail in a ship across the ocean of all human knowledge and experience in attempts to find solutions, distant solutions, to problems sent in by our listeners. I'm Matt Parker. I'm like the on-ship sextant, capable of doing ridiculously complicated and occasionally helpful calculations as we navigate our way across the ocean

of all human knowledge and experience. And I'm joined by Beck Hill, the poop deck. Because it's the funniest part of a ship. I don't know, Sexton's pretty funny too. He's also very funny. Both poop deck and sextant from Latin, boring, otherwise boring Latin words that sound funny in modern English. I'm amazed that you didn't say poop back. The poop back instead of poop deck. That would have been funnier.

This is why you are the poop deck of HMS Problem Squared. Yeah, I'm where all the action happens. You are the structural roof to a cabin at the rear of the ship. I mean, there's no better way to summarize your place in the role, whereas I'm kept in a box in a cabin. I really... Hi, new new listeners if anyone's never listened to a problem square before i swear we're normally i mean this normally makes a lot more sense there's a lot more clarified but matt is currently in australia as we were speaking i can

tell you giddy you're all hyped up i am i am i'm recording in a cupboard in London. I mean, that's business as usual from your end. But despite being in different hemispheres, on this episode... I'll be looking at how long it would take us to eat the moon if it was made of cheese. I've run the numbers on dropping a bullet. And we've got some any other business. Let's drop this bullet. So, Beck, I mean, other than being in the cupboard, how are you doing? I'm good.

I'm good. Been doing some voiceovers. Oh, from the cupboard? From the cupboard. Yep. There's a thing called a Yoto player, which is like, it's basically if you've got kids and you don't want to give them a phone or an iPad. Right. It's basically if you've got kids and you don't want to give them a phone or an iPad. Right, yeah.

You can give them this little box and they stick a card in and it will play like a story. And they've got an exercise series called Let's Move. And it's these three animals that lead kids through a story that involves exercising. The kids can listen. They exercise along. And then be a part of the story, yeah. Okay. And I voice kangaroo.

Of course you do. Which very much sounds like me now. It's like, hey, get off my tail. Normal Beck voice. It's three steps to the right, one step to the left, and clap. Got it? Okay. Great work at home, guys.

How detailed is the script? Is it word for word or do you kind of improvise around? It's mainly word for word, but I throw in improvisations and sometimes they make the cut. I did. Oh, here's a little. So the thing is, I've actually had friends message me and say, do you voice the kangaroo on the Yoto Player exercises? No, that's so good. Because they've got toddlers who use it.

And I was like, well, yes. But there's an episode where we are trying to make bird sounds and they wanted just a range of us doing different bird sounds and I did the Bluth family's versions of chicken noises from the rest of development. Has anyone in this family even seen a chicken? So I've, yeah, I've snuck that in there for any parents listening. They'll just hear me go like,

Hopefully that'll provide them with a bit of bit of lollage. How about you Matt? What have you been up to? I'm in Australia as advertised which is very exciting. Got to see my family for the first time in a while and I bought a pair of shorts. That was

one of the highlights of my trip so far. Have you never done that before? Well. You just wear the ones of my trip so far. Have you never done that before? I, well. You just wear the ones you find on the street. I'm wearing the shorts right now. I'm not going to get up. What's amazing about the shorts is they cost me $1.

I bought a $1 pair of shorts. I have never purchased a pair of shorts for that little money in my life. Please tell me it's from a charity shop. It was from a charity shop. Okay. Would you go op shop in Australia? Yeah, I would say op shop. Yeah.

But I translate now for where we live. You're in a cupboard in the UK. So you said charity shop. I believe thrift store would be the US equivalent. And so when I was packing, all my shorts were no longer up to, you know, they wouldn't cut the mustard anymore. Coming out of the pandemic. You say like no longer up to your knees.

No, yeah. Secretly become trousers in your spare time. Exactly. I've lost a lot of weight and height during the lockdowns. And so I was like, well, all the shorts, I only buy them in Australia. I hadn't been to Australia for a couple of years. So I was down on shorts.

I was like, no worries. I'll head out. I'll get some shorts when I get there. And I packed like my bathers and some other ones. So I had like, you know, backup shorts. And then it's coming into winter here. No one's stocking shorts. So I had to, I was like, well, I'll go to the op shop.

So I did a $1, I thought it was a pricing error. They're good shorts. But I got to the counter. They're like, no, $1, please. And I was like, can I pay on card? Oh, this guy. Someone died in those. Possibly.

They are haunted shorts. They're haunted shorts. People have returned them several times. That's why they're so cheap. If you get a good deal at a charity store, they're haunted. They're a short horror story. Yeah. What would haunted shorts do to you?

I don't know, but I reckon I could get a book out of it. I remember that stage of the writing career. That'll do. I think haunted shorts, they'd be like cursed shorts. They would just keep getting shorter until they become underpants. Well, I've not been measuring them.

And then they would go inside. I feel like... I thought you wrote stories for kids. I feel like a wedgie is the natural comedy ending to that. Yeah. Well, I ending to that. Yeah. Well, I went to pay on card. My mum was with me.

And she was like, no, no, no, I've got a dollar. So they cancelled the transaction. And my mum was like, oh, I haven't got a dollar. And so they had to put it through again. And I've been telling this story to everyone who will listen about the time I spent $1 on a pair of shorts. When you went shopping for shorts with your mum and she couldn't afford $1

so you had to put it on your card. I was like, he's had to put it on my card. Yep. Are you doing okay, Matt? Are you all right? Do we need more Patreons? Supporters?

I took the mum out. I was like, mum, we're going to go op shopping. I need to buy some shorts we'll buy some books we had a great time we bought books and shorts you spent all your money

on lasers and cameras for your special true from the highest highs to I need a dollar for shorts

one day you're on stage the Bloomsbury Theatre next day haunted shorts look back I mean all our updates can't be Bloomsbury Theatre. Next day, haunted shorts. Look back. I mean, all our updates can't be, oh, I had a TV show. Oh, I was voicing a kangaroo in a wildly popular children's toy.

Sometimes you've just got to buy a pair of shorts, you know, and I'm not going to. Yeah. I'm not going to try and glamor it up. It is what it is. All right. Enough of my problems. Shall we solve someone else's? Yeah. All right. Let's do it.

Okay, Beck. The first problem was sent in by Will, who used the problem posing page at a problemsquared.com. the problem posing page at a problem squared dot com and they have said if the moon was made of cheese how long would it take for the people of earth to consume it entirely good problem there will uh they've also clarified some assumptions for you they're going to assume people consume cheese at the same rate they normally would so the sudden surplus of moon cheese wouldn't change their eating habits uh there's no issue with transporting the cheese. And the moon is by volume, not mass. Very comprehensive.

Background notes, Will. All right, Beck, what have you got? Well, first of all, I love that this is Will's problem. Because it suggests to me that Will is some sort of supervillain with some kind of cheese ray gun thing and is just trying to just try to iron out the kinks before they follow through with a major plan or indeed a superhero who's trying to solve wild hunger oh nice in either case you want to do a few quick calculations just to make sure that your plan is is numerically feasible yes should always practice safe maths so as you may have noticed matt this is a mathsy question i've wandered into your your area you have it was on my short list of problems i saw it come in and went

that'll be a mat one and you were like no nah your short list of problems. I saw it come in and went, that'll be a matte one. And you were like, no. Nah. Your short list of problems is your shorts, mate. Yeah, you know it. I was like, I haven't got time for it this time. I'm too busy buying shorts. So I thought to answer it, I needed to work out what type of cheese the moon would be made of. Oh. And. Can I confess? No. to work out what type of cheese the moon would be made of oh and can i confess no oh okay not not the appropriate time i've never fully understood the moon is cheese joke

is it just does the moon look like a type of cheese or is it like some other historic reason for that being a joke? I have to admit, I've never, never really understood why that's a recurring thing. Yeah, well, short answer. Yes, it is because it looks a little bit like cheese. So there's actually no proof to suggest that anyone has believed that the moon is made of cheese. It has been referenced way back, way, way back. So, yeah. So to like almost ancient times.

So the earliest mention of the moon being cheese dates back to a lot of folklore. There's a Servian tale, so that's like the Slavs. It's like a almost paganism type thing. And there's a story about a fox that tricked a wolf. So basically the fox pointed at the reflection of a moon

in some water and was like, oh, there's a delicious cheese. Oh. And the wolf then drank all the water to try and get to the cheese and then burst. Wow. Oh, that's not the ending I saw coming. Yeah.

And there's obviously different versions of this in fact in the 11th century there was a reference to that folk tale by a french rabbi called rashy but they'd mixed it in with some more biblical type texts as well and it sort of continued on and then there were more references to it in more modern times. But it's just sort of always been this whole suggestion that the moon is made of cheese. The moon looks like cheese or could be mistaken for cheese. So I thought to work out what type of cheese the moon is made of, I should just go back to what the earliest version of that is on record and work out what sort of cheese was around so did a ton of research and eventually found that the most common cheese around the time that that

tale would have been told would have been very similar to what we today see as feta so there's obviously different types of different names that i can't pronounce. It's like a Balkan cheese. Right. But it is very, very similar to feta. So, I've gone with feta. You know what? I agree. That was probably the most moon-like cheese that I could think of. Yeah, I think other than that

like Swiss cheese, I think, is all elemental... elemental cheese, my dear Watson. Something like that. They've got holes in them, don't they? They look like big craters. Yeah, but you've gone fetter.

I've gone fetter. So I've done my calculations and found out the moon is roughly 22 billion cubic kilometers. And what I will say is I've actually, I've used the proper measurements in all of these, but to say them out loud would take forever. So I've rounded them to say roughly, but in my actual calculations, I use the real numbers. Oh, yeah. I've done a dexter in my calculations, but in explaining them, I will use the shorter versions. So the moon is roughly 22 billion cubic kilometers. That's a lot.

Yeah. A cubic kilometer a lot. Yeah. A cubic kilometer is big. Yeah. Which is, like, that blew my mind in itself. And then I had to actually go back and check. And, yeah. Did you get, like, the radius and put it into the calculation? No, I got it off NASA's website.

Oh, that does it too. Yeah, I figured I could trust that. I did check it against a few other websites just to make sure that I had understood. Oh, you want to double check NASA. Make sure they haven't, you know. For reference, the Earth is something trillion. And I know from seeing your show and from reading your book that the difference between a billion and a trillion is actually very much. It's a lot.

It's pretty big. It's pretty big. Yeah. Yeah. a billion and a trillion is actually very much it's a lot pretty big it's pretty big yeah yeah i mean from memory the moon's like a sixth of the size of the earth but that's like as as we've done many times that's just the length you've actually got to cube it to get the volume which is why you've got such a crazy difference yeah so first i had to look at how many cubic centimeters are in 22 billion cubic kilometers. Right. Yeah. And I did it in stages just to help me. So it turns into roughly 22 quintillion cubic meters. So you've gone from billion to quintillion. Okay, yeah, I'm with you, I'm with you. That's like an extra nine zeros.

Correct. And then into cubic centimeters from there, then I ended up with 22 billion cubic kilometers that equals roughly 22 septillion cubic centimeters. That sounds plausible. That's so weird to me because if I'm trying to think it through, my brain keeps trying to flipping it back into orders of magnitude, but I'm not fluent enough in septillion and quintillion to be able to do that

because you're saying I'm like a normal human, whereas I'm trying to put them back into stupid math version. Would you like me to? Carry on, carry on. It's my problem. I'll deal with it. Okay. Then I wanted to work out how much cheese that would be.

And with the help of our producer, Lauren, we measured... How big was the block of cheese you measured? So the block of feta is 160 cubic centimetres. So I think it was 10 by 8 by 2 centimeters. Oh, but that's like 200 grams of... It's only 200 grams, yeah. Okay, right, right, right. Okay, so that's your standard unit of cheese.

Gotcha. So then all I had to do was divide 22 septillion by 160. Piece of cake. Which turns out to be roughly 137 sextillion cheeses. Will wanted to know how long it would take us to eat it if everyone in the world was to eat cheese at the same rate as us. And I was able to find the numbers of how quickly Now by us, I'm going by UK because that is where we are generally based.

So in 2021, the UK consumed 11.14 kilograms of cheese per capita. So per person. Oh, so that's assuming we convert all our cheese consumption into feta, moon feta. Yeah, we're going to make that assumption. And I'll be honest, 11.14 kilograms of cheese per year, per capita. Like for me, that is, I am definitely bringing up that average. Half of us are. I'm definitely eating more than 11 kilos of cheese a year, I reckon.

A kilo a month. If you get like 250 gram blocks of cheese a block a week. I mean, that's a lot of cheese now. Think about it that way. Well, I mean, you should. I didn't do the calculations with these, but the U.S. is like between 17 and 18 kilograms per capita per year. Oh, that's cheating.

They've got cheese in so many different forms. Like in America, you can spray it on things. It comes in slices that you just slide into things. And Europe was something like just over 20 kilos of cheese. Oh my. Which you kind of expect. Wow. So in Europe, if you wanted to take, let's say you're traveling, you want to take a years of cheese with you.

It's more than your checked luggage on a flight yeah it was checked like it was like 15 20 kilos yeah yeah so you can push it to 23 maybe you'd get away with it i reckon you could just get away with it look really uh innocent as you go through so going by those numbers if we were assuming that we were all just eating feta instead of any other kind of cheese, that would be the equivalent of us eating roughly 56 cheeses each per year. Yep, gotcha. which means that if everyone ate cheese at the same rate as British people, then we would consume roughly 442 billion blocks of feta a year. That's about right. So, with that in mind, I can tell you the answer.

Oh my goodness. It means it would take us roughly 310 billion years to eat the moon oh my goodness which still sounds like a lot but when you consider that we need to eat 22 sextillion cheeses i mean i was expecting a bigger number than that, if I'm being honest. Thank you. In billions, that's achievable. Yeah. I mean, that's longer than the current age of the moon, which is like under 4 billion or something. So it's ripe. Yeah.

Yeah. And it's been, you know, space matured. I don't know how long the solar system is going to last. I feel like the sun will have baked it before, like expanded. Have a fondue. Yeah, fondued it before we have a chance to eat it all. I mean, you could factor in increased population in the future. But maybe with all this cheese consumption,

populations will dwindle, as everyone's time is dedicated to cheese eating. Do you know what? That seems like a difficult number to aspire to, you know, 310 billion. So I thought maybe I know that that's eating at the rate that we eat now, but what if we just ate, you know, what we could.

And if you recall episode 002, where we tried to find out how much pizza is too much pizza. We found out the capacity for the human stomach. And I double checked this because the human stomach was like on average about two liters when you're eating and i did double check a few things but they do say that that does convert quite well into about 2 000 cubic centimeters oh okay so of eating capacity. Yeah. So technically, we could eat 12 and a half blocks of feta a day. We would be overwhelmingly over our calorie, our recommended calorie intake. I think that's a lot of calories. Our recommended calorie intake is between 2,000 and 2,500.

And one cheese is about just over 500 calories so oh okay you'd be going about four times over the limit so the first five no problem so you're telling me i could wake up in the morning eat five blocks of feta and just be like done for the day that's that's my calorie intake i think legally i should say please don't do that oh but if we were to do that if we were to eat 12 and a half blocks of feta a day all of us the entire human race and just assume that the population is going to stay the same, that for every person who dies, we're assuming that babies are also capable of eating this much cheese.

Yep, fair enough. We could cut down. We wouldn't have to spend 310 billion years. We could eat the moon in only 4 billion years, we could eat the moon in only four billion years. I think you might have just got that within the expected remaining lifetime of the solar system, therefore the moon. Yeah. them therefore the moon yeah i've also just done a quick check here looking up on nasa and they say the sun has about five billion years to go normally i'd just ask my wife but she's in

the wrong hemisphere right now and so uh nasa's you know next one down my list uh five billion years so so if we max out we as you described, we can do it. It's achievable. That's amazing. We've just got to have 12 and a half blocks in a day. He's going to be dedicated. Yeah. That's my new level of, my new area of expertise.

That's amazing. I hate to speak on behalf of Will, but I feel like they phrased their problem with such great detail and precision. I can very safely double check it ticks all the boxes. I think you've solved that problem. You've both answered it as written and you found a way we can do it within the lifetime of the solar system. So I'm going to give you a big old cheesy ding. Thank you. There is a dinglet or a wing ding, if you will, for you, Matt.

This is from Jay. And I actually might get you to help me with this because I'm not entirely sure if I understand the problem. Oh, they're making some assumptions in this setup. Okay. So Jay says, I heard somebody say today that if you shot a bullet and dropped a bullet at the same time,

they would hit the ground at the same time. Which is, well, okay. They're glossing over some details. Okay. But that is correct. So if you were holding a bullet, and you also had a gun like perfectly horizontal, you're not shooting it down towards the ground. You're not shooting it up in the air. You're shooting it perfectly flat with the ground away from you, preferably, and away from everyone else.

Come to think of it. And you let go of a bullet at the same time. And the bullet you fire, there's nothing in its way it's just going to keep going until eventually it curls down and hits the ground it also assuming there's no air in the room which is mildly inconvenient and most shooting ranges will not accommodate this request or the bullet is big enough or in the air for not enough time that air resistance doesn't play a big part because if you're shooting it perfectly horizontally it's got no up or down component

in its in the force in the direction it's moving okay it's actually falling purely because of gravity because the shooting of the gun that's generally how falling works forwards most things fall because of gravity yes that, that is very true. But if you shot the bullet straight down, it would fall very, very fast because you've shot it down. Right. If you shoot it sideways, its downward component is only falling, which you are right, is all gravity. Okay. And so because the bullet you dropped and the bullet you shot are both only falling under gravity, they hit the ground at the same time.

That is, therein lies the setup. And you can try this. you shot are both only falling under gravity they hit the ground at the same time that is therein lies the setup and you can you can try this if you get like a nerf gun or something and you drop a bullet at the same time you shoot a nerf gun they will hit the ground at pretty much exactly the same time i i genuinely i'm sure you're right i think the problem is is that when i shoot nerf things, I think I'm shooting sideways, but I'm actually shooting slightly up so it curves. Like the way you would throw a paper airplane.

Aren't you also doing like an awesome cartwheel to get into cover at the same time while shooting multiple Nerf guns? Yeah, I do it to Spy Break from The Matrix. That track. That's the one. The propeller heads? Yeah, it is the propeller heads. I was going to say it. Yeah. Look That's the one. The Propellerheads? Yeah, it is the Propellerheads. I was going to say it. Yeah, yeah.

Look at us nerds. Yeah. Also, can I... Us late 90s nerds. I'm going to raise a point with you. No, do you know what? There's a time and a place back, and this is not it. Were you going to go one tangent too far?

It's just the fact that, you know, they're shooting those security guards. They're not agents they're just normal security guards who are doing like metal detector things at this building and i know that this is to like save the world or whatever but from like they're still real people they're still they say if you die in the Matrix, you die in real life. So they still literally murdered real life people. And it's not like some films where you're like, oh, but they're evil hench people. Or they're like, you know, they shouldn't be working for the mafia or whatever. You know, but these are just normal chumps at their job in a building. They're actually just working for the safety of other people.

They're trying to protect people. These jerks come in in slow motion. Yeah. And awesome shoot up the place. Right. Like if you were to watch that film from the perspective of someone who is quite happy living within the Matrix and doesn't want to go out and live in a crazy world. But you are just watching two people rock up and just straight up shoot up everyone

at the works at this building. Your last thought would be, wow, the bullets they're shooting are hitting the ground at the same time as the expelled shells. Wow, the bullets they're shooting are hitting the ground at the same time as the expelled shells. Hey, does that mean in that scene where it shows you the bullets falling out of the magazine in the helicopter and they're all falling in slow motion, they're coming out, while they're shooting across into the building at all the agents around Morpheus while he's sitting in his chair does

that mean that those bullets will hit the ground well yeah because they're in a building and the other ones are just hitting well if they didn't hit the building and there was no air and the second half of this problem then yes okay cool good right let's bring it back so that jay then goes on to say i generally agree with this but i have a problem yeah join the queue jay the bullet travels in a straight line over a long enough distance i would think the curvature of the earth comes into it the earth falls away meaning the bullet would have to fall further than the one just dropped so my problem is how much does the earth drop away and how much longer does the bullet would have to fall further than the one just dropped. So my problem is, how much does the earth drop away, and how much longer does the bullet take to hit the ground because of it?

Okay, so I'm not going to properly answer Jay's problem here, because you'd look at what sort of bullet, how far it travels, how far the earth curves. You could run all the numbers on this. properly answer Jay's problem here. Because, you know, you'd look at what sort of bullet, how far it travels, how far the earth curves. You could run all the numbers on this. What I thought was interesting is

the same situation still works. So, in the kind of realistic sense where we're talking about someone holding a gun, shooting it, there's a little bit of curvature

of the earth. Even if the bullet curves with the Earth, and you dig a hole so the one you drop can fall further, they'll still stay in sync. And actually, the idea of launching a projectile, and it's trying to fall down to the Earth, but the Earth is curving away. That's why satellites and things stay in orbit.

That's exactly what they're doing. Because if you gradually shot a bullet faster and faster and faster, at some point you would shoot it so fast, it would make it all the way around the planet before it was able to, you know, the planet's curving away as fast as it's dropping because it's going so fast. And actually I worked it out. You'd have to shoot the bullet at 7,900 meters per second. Or that's roughly, it's over 17,000 miles per hour. It's just over 28,000 kilometers per hour. If you shot a bullet that fast, it would go, and there's no air, it would go all the way around the earth and come straight back to where you are. So you shoot yourself and you know, it's your fault. It would actually go down a little bit, wouldn't it, over time.

So you might end up shooting yourself in the foot. Top-notch joke, but at that speed, it wouldn't go down at all. That's the speed to stay at exactly the same height. But how is that compared to dropping the bullet? So let's say you're going to drop a bullet, but you've dug a hole through the earth. So if you had a hole that went all the way through the earth and out the other side, straight through the middle, and ignore the engineering issues, ignore any practical concerns, you've got a hole all the straight through the middle. Ignore the engineering issues. Ignore any practical concerns. You've got a hole all the way through the Earth.

If you drop the bullet, it's going to start falling because the Earth is pulling it down. But the further it falls, the less Earth there is underneath it to keep pulling it down because it's working its way through the Earth. Until it gets to the middle, and right in the middle

it's no longer any gravity because it's right in the center of the earth but it's now moving super fast so it's going to overshoot and what will actually happen is if you dropped a bullet into a hole at the same time you shot another bullet so fast it's going to orbit the earth the one you dropped would fall into the hole speed up speed up speed up hit the middle carry on gradually slow down come out the far side of the earth out of the hole and then that's where it would slow down to a halt exactly when it would be hit by the other bullet what that you'd fired orbiting the earth what they they would they would hit at exactly the same point on the opposite side of the planet. Show me you're working. I can.

I've got in great detail. I've done it both using integrals and I've done it using Python code to do it numerically. I did it a few years ago. I dusted off some old calculations. And even better, the maximum speed the falling bullet would reach as it's falling through the Earth, right at the center of the Earth, is exactly the same speed you had to shoot the bullet to make it orbit in the first place.

It reaches the same maximum velocity halfway through the planet. Oh, that is some good circle maths. Oh, that's some circle maths. It's actually because it's exactly the same reason why if you shoot a bullet and you drop it, they hit the ground at the same time. It's because the downwards component is the same in both of them. And if you drop a bullet or anything through a theoretical hole through the Earth, it's basically moving.

It's a sine wave, simple harmonic motion. And that sine wave is the up and down component of the orbit going around the earth and it would take uh just over 42 minutes from when you drop it to when it reaches the other side and get shot so that's why it's the meaning of life we have to dig a hole that's why it's the meaning of life so yeah i mean the thing, just to throw in there, and I apologize if people already know this, but that 42 minutes it takes for something to fall all the way through the Earth, that doesn't have to go straight through the Earth.

That can be any hole going in any direction coming out somewhere else on the surface. If you slid something through that hole with no friction, it would take 42 minutes, exactly the same amount of time. In fact, if you're on any planet of any size, that's the same density as the Earth, it always takes 42 minutes and 10 seconds. It's the constant for any size planet. That's the same kind of rocky planet, same density as the Earth. A hole going any direction from one point on the surface to any other point it always takes the same amount of time for something to fall through that hole which is the same as the time it takes for grazing altitude orbits around the same planet does that mean in total recall when they get that lift thing that goes through the center of the

earth that they would you're thinking of the recent remake i say recent you're going to tell me it's like oh it was 2011 the yeah probably was that actually the remake of recall yeah they go through the earth and that that's exactly this concept so do they have a moment where they go they're all floaty in the middle with the middle you're in free fall the whole way but then you're slowing down that's a really good point. I guess it's the same as when you're in a lift and the lift

goes to the top and you get that little moment of in your tummy. Yeah. I think interesting because my instinct is when you're in free fall for the first half you wouldn't feel anything when you're in free fall for the first half, you wouldn't feel anything because you're in free fall. But in the second half, you're slowing down. So you would feel something.

But that's not symmetric. That's weird. That's a different problem, isn't it? Someone answer that for us. Oh, Lauren, producer, has come through. She says it was made in 2012. Oh, so close. See, I knew. It was like recent. it was made in 2012. Oh, so close. See, I knew.

It was like recent. It was a decade ago. I'm surprised you didn't get it spot on. You're such a big Colin Farrell fan. So what? Got that big poster of him behind you. Well, I think you've done a fantastic job there. So I think that's a ding.

I mean, I'm still not entirely sure what the question was. But look, I'm interested. I found it interesting. I've done something. Yeah. I'll give you a ding. And Jay. Thanks.

I'm sure Jay does too. Let's let Jay decide. We are pretty much at the end of the episode, which means A, O, B, it's any other business. So back this time, this time, we've got some reviews. We've not done this for a while. We like to read out the reviews that people leave for us on popular podcast platforms mainly itunes let's be honest uh because doing that encourages people to do it which is hugely beneficial as it pleases the algorithms that be and makes uh makes our podcast more prominent

and therefore more able to keep making it so what reviews reviews have we got in, Bec? I think it's Shimpei. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that correctly. X-H-I-M-P-E-I, who says, good listening, gave us five stars. Agree, Shimpei. They said, listen to this podcast if you enjoy maths, banter, popular sandwich franchise-based reproduction analogies

and resting sarcasm voice. I would say that you should listen to it even if you don't like those things. Listen to this podcast if you're ambivalent towards maths, banter, popular sandwich franchise-based reproduction analogies. What was that one? That's your Subway sandwich choices.

Actually, do you know what? That might have been me, Matt. That might have been me that came up with Subway. That sounds do you know what? That might have been me, Matt. That might have been me that came up with Subway. That sounds like a Beck analogy. Did you do that? Next review, also five stars out of five by someone who goes by TLMB, all caps. You can decide what that stands for yourself. Too Long Mibbam Beeb.

Too Long Might Brows. They wrote a joke that was so good, they used it twice. The title of the review is Exceedingly Good. With ding in exceedingly. Good work. And they opened their review by Exceedingly Good Stuff. Love it. Covering an eclectic range of things that may or may not be a problem for you.

Hey, I think they're all realistic and pragmatic problems but are for somebody and so our hosts said about this is like the voiceover and so our hosts said about solving them using some or all of maths logic data and ingenuity and then they just chucked two in jokes with no context at the end they've just shouted nubbered and that is not my card so excellent we also had five stars from wardy b who says a prime time show and they've uh put prime in quotation marks fantastic stuff wardy love it a monthly podcast has now become a bi-weekly weekly podcast. This makes it 2.16667 times better. It's good work. It's accurate. I mean, if people are on the fence

thinking, if it was just over twice as good, I'd get involved, this will convince them. Yeah, that is great. Thank you so much to those people for leaving reviews and please leave us, you know, send us a message. if you don't have a problem, but you have something that you want to say leave it in a five-star review and we're more likely to read it it's yeah it's the best way to communicate with us there's also of course

the problem posting page no no don't say that matt don't say it oh no sorry Don't say it. Oh, no, sorry. Sorry. At iTunes.apple. I don't know what the website is. So, now reviewing is not the only way you can support us. I mean, just listening. That's the first step. Thank you so much. And you're listening right to the end. Good on you.

You're our favorite. You can also tell other people about the podcast and a select few people support us on Patreon, which we are very grateful. And we understand that everyone can afford to do that. So thank you very much to the people who do that make it possible for everyone else to listen. And we like to pick three names completely at random every time to thank,

which this episode are... Simon Job or Job. Yuting Liu. And John E.M. Standing for extra mensal. Extra money. Fresh. Fresh.

You have been listening to A Problem Squared featuring myself, Matt Parker, as always, Bec Hill, and our producer is Lauren Armstrong Carter. The only thing left to do, and people who listened last time will know, I'm working with not quite my usual deck, but I'm now holding up four cards. Beck, is this your card? No.

Okay, I think I'm pretty much where I was a month ago.