A Problem Squared - 073 = Farting Thrust and Pocket Mistrust

Episode Date: November 20, 2023

In THIS episode… 💨 How low would gravity need to be for farts to lift you off the ground? 👖 Is there a solution to suboptimal trouser pockets?🔔 Ding ding ding! 📜 Business, fresh from the Any Other briefcase. If you want to participate in a MathsJam near you, you can find your local event right here: https://www.mathsjam.com/ And if you are a child, or an adult who has children who are fans of the show, tell THEM to send in their problems for our kids only episode - coming soon! Don’t forget to tag the problem with the word ‘Kidition’, it’ll help us find it! If you want to commission a cool bum-bag to support a good cause, Bec mentions Second Stitch Melbourne in her dinglett. You can find a link for them here: https://www.secondstitch.org.au/ Please do send us your problems and solutions to the website: www.aproblemsquared.com If you want more from A Problem Squared, find us on Twitter, Instagram, and of course, Patreon.

Hello and welcome to A Problem Squared, the podcast equivalent of a train if the solution to your problem is the destination. We're not always on time, sometimes there are delays due to planned engineering works, and we don't always stay on track. Sometimes there are delays due to planned engineering works. And we don't always stay on track. But despite our occasional derailments, we're still a lot safer than flying. One of your hosts is comedian and mathematician Matt Parker, who is a bit like a Shinkansen bullet train.

In that he is long. Yes. I mean tall. That's the better way to phrase that. Efficient and driven by alternating magnets. That is true. That is spot on. And I am your other host, comedian and presenter Beck Hill. And I'm a bit like a steam engine in that I am adorable, but slow and a little loco. I thought you were saying you produce vast quantities of heated gases. but slow and a little loco motive. I thought you were saying you produce vast quantities of heated gases. Yeah.

I mean, I wouldn't call, I guess, I guess my farts are somewhat steamy. That's not what I'm saying. I produce a lot of carbon emissions. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

That's the intro. What do you reckon? Full steam ahead. In this episode... I've calculated the power of a fart. Oh, that's apt. I'm going to pick a pocket or two. Oh, wow.

And if you like your business any other, get ready. Because we're going to pull into the stations. Yeah. Soon. Any other business class. Tickets, please. Check your tickets. Matt, how are you?

I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. Excellent. I lied. Oh. What a twist. Not then. I am good, I'm good, I'm good. Excellent. I lied. Oh. What a twist. Not then, I am good.

I was going to say, you would make a terrible filmmaker, like M. Night Shyamalan, just immediately starts and then just goes. Oh, by the way, everyone's dead. It doesn't look like it, but they are. No, I think you were just saying, you were listening back to a previous episode where I said by the time it comes out, I will have handed in the second draft to my book. Yeah. And I have not. No, and I laughed when I heard you saying it.

And you were correct. Oh, Matt, you fool. Correct to laugh. It's like in the final throes. So I'm very excited. But I still went to the Mass Jam conference. Oh, yes. That was on last

weekend so anyone who goes to mass jam can nominate to do a five minute talk and then we select the the top n offers and you know bearing in mind like a mix of different topics and everything like that and the topic people can talk about anything they think would be interesting to someone who's into maths so we have you, talks about textiles and crafts. We have talks about programming. We have talks about very abstract mathematics. We have talks about engineering, baking, you names it. Love it. It's such a great range of topics, but all very nerdy. And my favorite one was given by someone called Ben Ashford, who's done some great talks and bits in the past. Yes. And he realised that in Europe, like mainland Europe, not the UK,

you get streets named after days of the week. So, you get like 22nd of December Street or like 4th of November Street or something like that, yeah. Where? Europe. I mean, I've just... You were there. I was just in Europe.

I don't recall seeing any streets named after. It's way more prevalent. And his theory was in a lot of countries, if you write an address, you put the house number at the end. So it'd be confusing to live at number 20, 22 December Street, because you've got two numbers one after the other. Whereas in Europe, it'd be like 22nd December Street, house number 20. And that works.

I find that that way of writing things, although it seems counterintuitive because of the way that we were brought up. Yep. I find it a bit like, and I'm going to say it, I think I've mentioned this before. I think the American way of doing the date makes more sense. Move. Yeah. Yeah.

Because I know how you feel about it with little bigger biggest. Yes. But my reasoning is like actually when it comes to say if it's like I'll see you on the 20th. It's assuming the context of this month. Yes. So, like if you write 20 as like the first number. It's like but of what? I like to have the context first. You want to have the month first.

Yeah. And then you want the day within the month. Yeah. Because for me, that's better for the way I store information. That's a lot. It can take a moment to process that. And I think this works the same with the street. I don't like how it looks. But I think it makes more sense for a post.

If I was delivering mail, I want to know the street. It doesn't matter what the number is. You want the street first. Without the context of the street, the number makes zero sense. I like to know where the... I want to know the street. It doesn't matter what the number is. You want the street first. Without the context of the street, the number makes zero sense. I like the fact it's in order. Because you go from... I know. You zoom out.

You got the position on the street. And then you got which street. And then which town. And then which... Yeah. No, I agree. But realistically... You're right.

Okay. You don't know what's coming next. Well, that's the way it works in Europe. Yeah. So, you'd be very't know what's coming next. Well, that's the way it works in Europe. Yeah. So, you'd be very pleased. I would be pleased. But they do dates the not American way. Yes.

I don't know if there's anywhere in the world that puts their house numbers after the street name, but puts their month before. You'd think it would be both because it's the same idea. Yeah. Huh, interesting. Tell us, listeners. Well, Ben got curious about this apparently there's like one or two streets in the uk which are named after a specific day of the year like a calendar day not just like december street yeah but like you know fifth of june or whatever all right it was like the day the town was founded or something like that but there's

just this culture of doing that and he was like i wonder if they all exist oh all the dates all the dates of course all 366 dates right yep and so he downloaded he tried looking on google but that got a bit tedious so he found different data sets like open maps and stuff he could download yeah and wrote a bunch of code to then find keywords every single oh yeah he had to do it a bunch of code to then find and check off every single... Oh, yeah. He had to do it a bunch of different ways. It wasn't a straightforward process. Does he include when the month is in a different language?

Yes. Wow. Yeah. So, there's one... Like, they're all different languages, but there's one street of each day. Yeah. So, you could visit all of them and take a photo to make a calendar because you'd have an exact one for every single day.

And so then Ben thought, how far would that be to visit? So he wrote some more code to work out an optimal path to visit them all. It would take seven weeks. So he took two months off work. No. Yes. And he visited every single day of the calendar. A street named after it.

That's awesome. It's incredible. So, Ben won Mass Jam. That's very cool. So, that's how I've been. Speaking of Europe, how have you been? Ah. Oh, what a link. So.

We call that a Eurostar in the business. Yeah. Yes. So We call that a Eurostar in the business Yeah Yes, I mentioned this in a previous episode But I was co-hosting Comic Con in Brussels With Matt Hyten, the other Matt The other Matt, one of your many Matts One of my, well, the two main Matts The two main Matts So we got to Brussels on the 3rd of November

My birthday is on the 4th of November I was meeting up with my friend Sam He's actually a sound engineer on several he does like office ladies and comedy bang bang and all conan and all those ones big podcast all the big podcasts and but it's his first time overseas oh yeah first time overseas outside the states and so he was like i'm gonna do a european trip and he's a massive nerd so he was like i'm gonna come to comic-con in brussels and i was like awesome i'll be there so i went to go meet up with him and i'd said to him i'd made it very i said right uh it's your first time overseas uh brussels this particular area very big with

pickpockets right lots of thieves in this area so watch all your stuff keep an eye on yourself because you're thinking as a seasoned traveler as a seasoned traveler you've got to give advice to people who've not traveled overseas before yeah and this is like my 10th time in brussels yeah you're an old hand yeah so we catch up with the pub and then we're walking back to my hotel and i take out my phone to check the directions put it back in my pocket and then a couple blocks away go to check my phone again realize it's not in my pocket wow yeah that's amazing annoyingly i'd someone had bumped into me while they were walking and i remember thinking that was a they definitely didn't need like there was space yeah there was space to not bump into me yeah but at the same time i was like oh maybe they're drunk

or whatever like i was like oh and also it was mid conversation i didn't want to like suddenly stop and be like hey buddy what's your problem and then i suddenly was like and i just turned to sam and i was like i've been pickpocketed and i of course on my phone because i'm one i'm a nerd i get those cases that's like a wallet so it had my card and everything in it my hotel key card everything so i got back to the hotel that height and was like where where were you i've been texting you i knew you're meeting up with a friend and then i heard nothing and then i heard nothing i was like have you been murdered like what's going on i was like my phone got stolen he was like oh no and of course this all happened so on the day of my birthday we we interviewed Jean-Claude Van Damme.

Oh, yeah. And I don't have any photos of him. You can't get a selfie. You got nothing. I can't post about it. I just, I was at home going, man, Beck's been quiet. Like I messaged you on the Monday. Oh, yeah.

Nothing. So this is the other thing. I was like, huh. Tried to ring you on the Tuesday. Nothing. I'm like, that's unusual. Very unusual for me. Well, so on the Friday, when I got the train from Amsterdam to Brussels, I thought, well,

it's going to be a very busy weekend. I don't want to spend my weekend doing admin, you know, in my spare time. No, get that done early. And I knew I had to finish the design for the Christmas card for our Patreon supporters. Christmas card. Yes. And I knew I had to finish the design for the Christmas card for our Patreon supporters. The Problem Squared Christmas card, yes. So I did it on the train on my phone because it had like a stylus and everything and I use it for drawing.

And so I did the design on my phone and I sent it to you. Thank goodness you sent it to me. I know. Normally I'd be like, oh, send it later. I was like, no, send it now. Yep. And then mere hours later I had it stolen. Gone.

And I remember thinking, thank goodness I at least did that. Yeah, because I got the design. I'm like, oh, Becky's on it. And then I sent it back to you like the final version of the card for you to sign off on and heard nothing. Yeah. I was like, weird. Rang, nothing.

And then eventually got a message from Gav saying your phone was gone. Yeah. Well, I mean, the annoyance of one stranger and the kindness of many more yes it's a net gain of kindness oh yeah yeah much bigger gain of kindness this first problem is for matt and it's from james and annelle, James's daughter, who's nine. He's nine. Good square number, Annabelle. Yeah, good work.

And they would like to know how low would gravity need to be for your farts to lift you off the ground? It's a good question. Yeah. On this podcast, I do a lot of maths and you do a lot of fart jokes. And farts. And farts. Yeah. And so I thought, hey, you know what?

I'm going to give it a go. In the interest of... What, a fart? Not a fart. Some fart mathematics. Some math... Mathematics. Yeah, no, we'll workshop that.

We'll work on that later. So I thought, you know what? I'll give this a go. Yeah. Even though it's going to be complicated it's probably going to involve biology and chemistry and physics but i'll see if i can simplify it down to just some maths to work this out yeah so the the problem is this if you fart that exerts a force and in theory enough force could lift you off the ground yeah propulsion a bit like if you've

got a balloon yes and you let go of the balloon and it flies all the way around the room yep so or a jet pack or a jet pack oh something like that yes now the problem is the fluid dynamics of how that works is very complicated. Okay. And so, I thought, you know what? I don't want to get right into all the nitty-gritty of, like, gases moving and the forces involved. I thought I'd just try and simplify it down to when you fart, you have to accelerate some gas. Yes. Because there's gas in you that's not moving. And after you fart, it's just moving quite quickly. Yeah. And I thought I'd look up how fast a fart is. Yes. Because there's gas in you that's not moving. And after you fart,

it's moving quite quickly. Yeah. And I thought I'd look up how fast a fart is. Yeah. Now we've done how fast is the speed of smell. That's right. Yeah. This is a subtly different question. This is the gas molecules. When you fart them out, how fast are they going? I feel like that's dependent. It is dependent. Yeah. And someone claims to have done the research online and they say between 7 and 10 meters per second which is 25 to 36 kilometers an hour yeah just believable yeah i think so i think if it's the sort of fart that's like a boat yeah yeah yeah yeah so i'm not one of those slow long ones a slow long. We're back into the world of fluid dynamics. I'll tell you that.

If they're mine. Well, you know, don't trust them. What I don't want is an ongoing jet of gas. You want a quick... Yep, done. One and done. And then I want to work out how much it took to accelerate the gas up to speed. And is that enough to lift you off the ground? Yeah, I've seen that on enough TV shows.

I think that's a real thing.'m pretty sure then i got into the chemical composition of farts because then i was like well how heavy is a fart oh well it depends the volume of the fart and the chemical as in the loudness the loudness so so so now there's more research apparently farts they vary everything varies dramatically as you can imagine particularly involving digestion on the order of a hundred milliliters seems to be an average fart volume okay a tenth of a liter a quarter of the gases are just air that you've inhaled only a quarter only a quarter yeah you've inhaled. Only a quarter. Only a quarter. Yeah.

That you've inhaled and it's gone into your tummy. Yeah. When you eat and chew and do all these things, you're constantly, bits of air always sneaking along for the ride. The ones that don't come out as burps. Some come as burps. Some gets passed through the whole digestive system. So apparently at the end, 25% of your fart is just air.

That's like at last. Yeah. Done. And then the other three quarters are byproducts from digestion. And that varies dramatically person to person. There's hydrogen in there. There's methane in there. There's things that don't smell great in there.

But the things that don't smell great are actually quite small as a percentage right yeah so i was like well if i want to make up the mass of a fart the heavier the fart the more it's going to push you off the ground okay so i just decided to assume it's all heavier gases in fact i thought it would be i assumed it'll be all air because it's a quarter air and the rest of stuff that's generally lighter than air so i. So I'm going to say, you know what, let's just for ease of calculation say it's all air. And that means that your average fart weighs 0.1 grams, which is not much. Yeah. And you accelerate it up to a speed of 7 to 10 meters per second.

Over what kind of time interval do you reckon? What's the stationary air to moving air oh as in the length of a fart yeah okay half a second half a second i'm gonna put because i got the spreadsheet here i can put all my assumptions in so let's say you go from not moving to moving in half a second okay that means you've got an acceleration, an average acceleration. So I averaged 7 and 10 meters per second final speed of 17 meters per second per second. 17 meters per second per second. So every second, the velocity of something goes up by 17 meters per second. Okay.

Once a second. Right. So acceleration, confusingly, because speed is meters per second but the rate at which that's changing every second is meters per second per second got it and that's what gravity is measured in gravity acceleration is always meters per second per second or it's always length per time per time okay new units right so what's our current gravity as a measurement 9.81 meters per second per second huh that's the acceleration due to gravity so can you explain that what that means yep so if you were standing let's say you're going parachuting so you're going to land perfectly safe this is

not dangerous you jump off a high object initially when you step off a high object. Initially, when you step off a high object, you weren't falling at all to start with. Your acceleration down was zero. You were going down zero meters every second because you weren't moving yet. One second later, you're going to be moving quite quickly. Okay. In fact, a second later, you're going to be moving 9.8 meters per second. That's going to be your speed. Okay.

But you will keep getting faster and faster. Another second later. Actually, let's round it. Let's say it's 10 meters per second. It's 9.81, but it does vary a bit. But it's easier to say 10 seconds. So after a second, you'll be falling at a rate of 10 meters every second. Yeah.

So if I'm very high in the air, one second later, I'm 10 meters lower than I was before. No, one second later, you're moving 10 meters every second. But it's been, oh, so I've got to wait a second. Yeah, but the thing is that's your instantaneous speed, but it took you a while to get that fast. So you won't have actually done a full 10 meters yet because for most of that second, you were still speeding up to 10 meters per second.

So after one second, I've fallen some amount. Some amount of distance. Less than 10 meters. Yeah. But as of that second, between that and the next second, I've fallen 10 extra meters. Yeah. But you have gotten faster during that time. And so the second after that, it's 20 meters.

Well, by then you're going faster again. By then you're going 20 meters well by then you by then you've you're going faster again by then you're going 20 meters a second because you're still accelerating this measurement is dumb it's ridiculous oh yeah why do we this to make zero sense this is why calculus was invented because you're constantly changing the rate at which you're changing your position and it's silly this is why I prefer terminal velocity. Oh, yeah, terminal velocity, then you stop. Then everything bounces out. What is terminal velocity?

Terminal velocity, whereas the acceleration due to gravity trying to speed you up so you fall faster, matches the amount that dragging through the air is slowing you down. Okay. And so it all cancels out, and you just keep moving at the same speed. You're not accelerating, you're not decelerelerating you probably won't fart that hard no no we're not going to gain terminal velocity so now i know the force you've got to put on your fart to get it up to speed yeah i then use

the fact that force is mass times acceleration and we know how heavy the fight is we know it's mass and we know how fast we accelerated it so i can work out the force that you've put on the gas to get it up to speed got it and become a fart and that is because of newton's laws of physics like if you throw something forward it also pushes you back right yeah and so we now know if you've got to accelerate you'll be pushing a fart one way it's you're going to get pushed the other way so now i got the force it's going to push you in the other direction okay which is not enough to lift you off the ground so i ran all the numbers and the unit of force is called a newton the force it takes to get a fart up to speed is about two milli newtons a lot of force but we know the amount of force that's holding someone down so

what mass should we have for our person however you are laying in kilos so if i round up say like i'm 60 so this should we do it i was less before my holiday but i've eaten a lot of delicious pastries 60 kilos right the force holding you down the earth is 294 newtons okay and the force from your fart is only 0.002 newtons yeah so it's making zero difference no it's 140 ish thousand times smaller than it needs to be okay okay so with the gravity it's got be 140,000 times less or you could be able to fart 140,000 times stronger. Okay. To lift yourself off the ground according to our assumptions in this model. Yeah, I understand.

However, could you reread the question for me? What was the wording again? How low would gravity need to be for your farts to lift you off the ground? It occurs to me there's another way to interpret that problem. Because I've gone with like the propulsion from the farts pushing you off the ground but actually a fart on average is less dense than air so actually there's a level of buoyancy you'd achieve oh oh as in um like a helium balloon yeah in fact a lot when you lot... But when you lose it, if you fart,

it's not inside you. Well, a lot of farts is hydrogen. And that's a good lifting gas. So if you were wearing like an airtight outfit... Oh, like a spacesuit. Like a spacesuit on ground though, and you fart enough, you could build up enough buoyancy to float.

I would say two problems with that. Yeah. Surely one is that that gas is already inside you. That's a good point because the gas is inside you. Yeah. But you're producing it all the time. So you could hold in your farts and this would still work. Yeah.

So that's one issue. My other issue is if you were in a space suit, an airtight space suit, filling up with farts and this would still work yeah so that's my that's one issue that my other issue is if you were in a space suit an airtight space suit filling up with farts okay would you eventually suffocate i'm imagining you can't breathe more of a wetsuit situation no that's when i'm fine if you seal off like all the sleeves and the neck and you gradually inflate a wetsuit so i thought i'd run the numbers on that too sure but now okay so now i've gone the other way so before i assumed it was all air now i'm going to assume it's 25 air and 75 hydrogen gas is not. But that's the most buoyant, realistically, it's going to be. It's a lot of hydrogen, but it's other gases.

Methane's also very, not that everyone produces methane, apparently, depending on your gut microbes, but that's also a very light gas. Yeah. So you're producing a lot of light gases. So I worked out how much lifting force you would get from a fart. Like if you stayed in this inflating suit for like the course of a day, how much buoyancy would you accumulate? And the number of farts per day, again, varies dramatically.

It'd be like a Zorb ball. Like a Zorb ball, yeah. Yeah, sure. Yeah. But you've got to get in it with no air to start with so there's room to expand. You know when you work in a small room all day without the windows open and stuff and people walk in and they're like, whoa. Yeah, but you're fine.

So you've got to climb into a Zorb ball. Now, you've got to bring breathing apparatus. That's why I think the head has to be outside the ball. Oh, okay. So you can breathe and talk to people. Okay, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then the ball gradually inflates.

I'm really enjoying this. So I, well, I worked out you're going to get on the order of one and a half litres of hydrogen a day. That's like assuming maximum hydrogen production and 20 farts a day. Okay. Where did you get the i looked at a couple different websites for number of i'm like i've got my search history is average times we fart yeah yeah and that seems to be that's at the high end of the scale 10 to 20 apparently and so that's not enough hydrogen to lift you off the ground. That's enough to lift 1.8 grams off the ground. Okay.

And people weigh more than that. What? I know. In fact, it would take, so for the 60 kilos we put in, it would take 91.2 years of farting. Wow. To be able to lift yourself off the ground because of the buoyancy uh-huh which is plausible like that's it would be a lifetime endeavor but how low would the gravity need to be if you've got lower gravity if you lower the gravity you would speed that up yeah

so you know what let's do a quick how low would the gravity need to be that one's better if you fart for a day after versus 180 versus 140 000 but that's for the singular fart that's for a single fart yeah if you store them up all day and use the buoyancy instead only 33 000 times weaker i've got one more question i don't think this is going to be in your expert your spreadsheet yep what if seeing as you're presuming a lot of hydrogen yep it's a good point hydrogen is flammable i have not worked it out but you can use hydrogen as rocket fuel hydrogen is flammable if it's mixed with oxygen yeah. So, and there's oxygen in a fart because you've got air. That might be the limiting reactant.

Hmm. But maybe if you could liquefy your farts. Which I can. Grow up. Look, this is a mature discussion. You can mix them with liquid oxygen. You could use them as rocket fuel. Yeah.

Potentially. But this was not the question sent by the could use them as rocket fuel. Yeah. Potentially. But this was not the question sent by the listener. Area for future research. Yeah. As I mentioned in the intro, we do sometimes go off track. But you know what? To bring us back on the track. Into the station.

I want to say a single fart to propel you 140,000 times less gravity. Collecting your farts all day and being buoyant 33,000 times less gravity Wow I hope that answers the question Problem I'm going to give it a farting Hey

That's good work I like it I hope that's enough for James and Annabelle I think I can take another year off doing fart content now I i hope that's enough for james and annabelle i think i can take another year off doing fart content now i feel like that's my quota oh well i'll just have to take over them won't i and if any other listeners have kids or are kids and they've got questions for the show we are planning on doing a a special kids edition yep are we calling it the kiddition kiddition episode of A Problem Squared.

So if you would like that, please send in your problems to the problem posing page, aproblemsquared.com and pop. Mention Kiddition. Kiddition or Kid Edition. Yeah. Yeah. Just so that we know that it's specifically for that. We will also take any links to voice notes or things.

Oh, yes. Send them in. Yeah. If your kids want to ask us in a voice note setting so yeah well done matt done thank you thank you uh next problem was sent in on the problem posing page at a problem squared.com by choclad choclad that's what they typed in that's what we're gonna say they say they have a predicament involving their pockets in their pants huh according to choclad they are on the taller side

and when they sit in a seat that's lower like a couch or a car seat and they point out for any us listeners they don't mean a children's seat in a car. They mean the actual regular seat in the car. Apparently, if you say car seat, people think of like the kids' insert seat. They mean just the regular seat. Their issue is their knees end up higher than their hips, which leads to an emptying angle, great phrase, of the front pockets. They keep their phone and their wallet in their front pockets, which means they run into issues with the phone falling out and getting lost in the couch or accidentally leaving it on a seat in a car they have tried some solutions themselves they've attempted

to fix it by buying pants for our uk listeners trousers with zippers on the pockets that feels like problem solved. But Chocolat says they feel like there may be a better solution. And Beck, I mean, I have this problem too. So I'm also looking forward to hearing the solution. I thought you might because you're quite tall. I am quite tall. So I imagine that you have the similar, was it an emptying angle? I do have an emptying angle.

And I have lost my wallet before because of an emptying angle i do have an emptying angle and i have lost my wallet before because of an emptying angle actually it was a pub in gotteming sat in the chair and stuff slides out of them really so easy so i've had the same issue as well even though i don't have the angle of emptying it's more that i'm a i'm a wriggle bum right so so I change position a lot yeah and so uh usually that stuff will work its way out of my pockets that way the other reason I was uh drawn to this is because when my phone got stolen I was wearing a trench coat and I normally wouldn't keep I would normally keep my phone on like a a pocket that's closer to my body yeah but i didn't have any pockets in those clothes which was why it was in my trench coat pocket which was a much easier that's an

easier easier lift am i using that right i should yeah sure why not yeah and so that was my issue with that is that not enough pockets frustratingly there was something that i nearly packed which i am now going to use a lot more. Yep. Because of this very problem. This one's made by a charity in Australia where they train refugees for tailoring. How to make bum bags. How to make bum bags. Well, they give them sewing skills so they can start up businesses.

Link in the show notes, right? Yeah. You are now the third person I know who has a functional bum bag. You are now the third person I know who has a functional bum bag. Well, it's funny you should mention this because I was thinking now, look, while a bum bag or a funny pack, whatever you want to call it, is really useful and does sort of do the job. Yeah. Problem solved. It's not always convenient.

No, that's true. Sometimes, you know, it gets in the way if you're sitting down, then you end up with this thing sort of yeah it's a whole bunch of things you gotta carry yeah yeah ends up like all scrunched up on your stomach and so you can't like sit up properly and sometimes it's sweaty and sits heavy and stuff and then i realized we've sort of talked about this before oh because in a previous episode we toyed around with the idea of a utility belt. We did. Which would help lower crime. Yes, that was the purpose of the belt. And I've recently been the victim of a crime.

Oh, you have? Yes. And if I'd had a utility belt. You wouldn't have had that crime. The crime would have been down by one. Yeah. By one crime. So, I've been looking into things like tool belts and utility belts

there are a lot of options out there where they have essentially it's a pocket on a belt pocket on a belt pocket on a belt what i think you'd want is something that you can slip your hand into easily and put out your phone but someone else would it's not so loose that someone else could easily do that. I think it needs to be both functional and fashionable. It needs to be something that sits nicely without looking too, you know. It's not in your face. It just kind of blends in.

Yeah. So, my plan is to design this. But I thought what I would do is talk about it first because there is an off chance that one of our listeners might be sewing inclined and say, I've already made something like this. Or someone might know a product we have not. Exactly. Like a utility sash.

Yeah. And there's a lot of, now I need to say, as I said, I've done a lot of search. There's a lot of utility belts out there at FashionBot, but a lot of them look like they're for fantasy cosplay. Like almost all of them look fantasy cosplay or like cowboy cosplay. There's a lot of leather. There's a lot of...

And they're nice, but they're not... And I don't judge anyone for wearing them, but they're not going to go with my sorts of clothing. They're not going to go with every outfit. And has an angle that's not going to empty when you sit down. Or at least has something that means it stops the stuff from sliding out. But you want to be able to slip your hand in, take it out again. The other option is you can get phone cases that have shoulder straps now. You see a lot more people with them. So people

just wear them. Like a very small purse. Yeah, like a tiny handbag, but it's just your phone. Wow. For me, I still feel but it's just your phone wow for me i still feel that it's dangerous because the way that i move i'm more likely to crack the screen on something yeah but uh that is also an option is wearing wearing a phone a little bit like a like a handbag and then that way you can easily pick it up and grab it and look at it at any moment yep if you drop it that's the added bonus. It's just, it's hanging on you. So it's not going to fall to the floor. You're not going to lose it if you sit down.

Maybe if you get something that has a little pocket in it. Maybe there's two options here. Maybe we need an over the shoulder option. Yeah. Yeah. We need a belt option. Belt option. So that's the challenge, isn't it?

I realize that I haven't officially solved the problem, but the reason is because I thought, yeah, I can design something and I can try and make it or get it made. But on the off chance that I've missed something that someone else is like, actually, especially if anyone's like, I've actually designed a product that I'm trying to get off the ground. Yeah. Perfect time, perfect place. So, to be continued, I think. so to be continued i think i my solution is basically partly is multi-tap every time i get up or i leave a room i tap my pockets oh you check everything yeah yeah change is hard though yeah exactly that's why i have to do it every time it's it's it makes it look like you know

it's a little ritual you have to go through but But I found if I just do it every time. And I realized very quickly if I'm about to leave a room and I haven't got my phone. Because every time I go through a doorway, I tap my phone. Which could arguably be overkill. No, it would have stopped me potentially. But that's what I ended up doing.

So those are our answers for now? Yep. I mean, look, Chocolad might be happy with that. Chocolad may have never heard of a bum bag or a utility belt. Yeah. Or Chocolad, if you end up buying one of the many phone holder options online, let us know. Send us pictures. Or if any listeners have solved this for themselves just using what's out and about.

Someone's like, I glued non-slip rubber matting to the back of my phone and that solved all my problems. Let us know. Like, that might do it. Yeah, maybe. That's a good shout. Just put a, yeah. Non-slip case, yeah. On everything.

Everything. Oh, your change. Every surface. Just glue on a little bit of non-slip mat. Yeah. So, let us know. Problem posing page. There's a drop down. Yeah. So let us know, problem posing page. There's a drop down, click solution.

That's aproblemsquared.com. And we'll provide an update in a future episode. Or a past episode if you're listening backwards. We are now arriving in Station Any Other Business. Please be aware that the front four coaches exceed the length of the platform. Oh, my goodness. You will need to move back in order to disembark the train. I don't know.

I've seen how much AOB we've got this time. It's a long platform. Oh, I see. Yeah. Well, would you like to kick us off? Okay, let's do the Twitter poll. Now, this might take some explaining if you missed the Halloween zombie episode, but we put a poll out on Twitter. Yeah, was that 071, I think?

And we asked, if a zombie can ride a chicken, does that also mean it can ride a bike? Because I argued, no. ride a chicken does that also mean it can ride a bike because i argued no because i was like riding a chicken riding a bike are very different things well i dare say the internet agrees with you yeah because because then not everyone's an idiot now a suspicious number of people were like yes vaguely a quarter 23.3 percent were on board 74.6 percent were not oh and an extra 2.1 percent had uh additional additional options they wanted to choose yeah now some of the arguments are pretty good i quite enjoyed adam J3141 wanted to consider the contrapositive saying if a zombie cannot ride a bike, does that mean it cannot ride a chicken? And they said if it's plausible, a zombie can't ride a bike, but it could in theory still ride a chicken. And therefore riding a chicken does not mean you can ride a bike. chicken and therefore riding a chicken does not mean you can ride a bike and that a lot of people got very excited about the fact that pedaling is a whole separate skill yep that's what i argued

correct well chickens do not run on pedals in the interest of data integrity we did two other polls to make sure we got as many respondents as possible and the spot Spotify, the baked in Spotify poll is unnervingly close to the Twitter poll. Like it's also gone 75% ish, no, 25% correct, which is interesting. However, if you think you're like, well, that just means we've done two different samples and got the same result. It also went out on Instagram now instagram is a lot closer 61 said no and 39 said yes and there were more votes on instagram ah so i mean i don't want to be captain rounding too much but i feel like 39 to 61 is basically 50 5050. So it was 39 for...

Oh, 39 for yes, they could ride a bike. And 61 for no, they can't ride a bike. Yeah. But we got more votes on... More votes there. ...the stories than we did for... We could do a weighted average because we know the number of votes. But in both cases, yes, one.

I mean, in all cases, yes, one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like... Even though you're arguing that 39 versus 61 is the same as 50-50. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like... Even though you're arguing that 39 versus 61 is the same as 50-50. Yeah, yeah. I feel like we're focusing very heavily on can... If a specific zombie can ride a chicken, can the exact same zombie ride a bicycle? Or is it more if the concept of zombies are able to ride a chicken,

then a different zombie can ride a bicycle? Like if all zombies could ride chickens could they ride a bicycle well if if there's a zombie out there capable of riding a chicken that demonstrates that zombies are able to maintain and utilize a complex skill set right which means they could also a different zombie now i'm disagree i still disagree because a chicken and a bike are different well no one's arguing okay the people have spoken and Beck, you are correct. So I would like to humbly concede. Yeah, that's right.

I'm correct in the fictional thing. In the hypothetical fictional. In the very important high stakes. Yeah. Thank you. It's a win for democracy. We also got a ding from Spina. It's always nice. Yeah. Spina came back to us about the the nerdy

decor yeah that's right nerdy decor from episode 069 tiling planes and driving planes and spina wanted to know how they could decorate their rented home with stuff nerdier thank you for taking that problem i don't think i'm cool enough to be given signed discoveries by the discoverer which is a reference to the uh the signed uh hat tile i got tile or as i call it a t-shirt tile they said they guess i have to get more famous in the meantime they're a big fan of the idea your problems doesn't solve your problem no crates more arguably but they're a big fan of the idea to replace knobs with numbers and or shapes so pleasantly turns out i have exactly 13 knobs in my kitchen so each one will be a catalan solid they're exactly 13 catalan salt perfect if you accept the archimedean counting of shapes same glasses

are in the deltoidal hex hexaconterhedron isn't as smooth, but it's worth it. Nice. Good shape. I don't know what any of that sentence meant, but it was fun to say. Yep. And then they've ended with ding. Ding. Excellent. Yeah. Love a ding.

Official ding. Speaking of dings. Yep. We also heard back from Nettle, who posed us the paint set problem in 072, which was the last episode. That is a fast turnaround. Yeah. They've given me a ding.

Yay. Painting. Yeah. They've just said they've given us a ding. Well, concise. Love it. Perfect. That's what I'm after. Finally, people have noticed that I made a prediction

in episode 051. Yep. And they've come with receipts. They're like, at 20 minutes and 16 seconds in. Oh. It was dated the official Problem Squared prediction for hitting 2 million downloads. TM. They've trademarked it.

Trademarked it. Possibly we trademarked it. I can't remember. Would be the 7th of November or November 7th. Yes. 2023. So, what is on with that now okay it's signed a human being re-listening to episodes yes in an unknown order because people listen to them in different orders so good point and no we haven't hit 2 million downloads we fell compared to 2 million 11.7 percent shy it took us three

years to hit 1 million yeah much and now it's taken us what nine months to hit an extra 700 yeah so we don't know it depends how you want to measure inaccuracy if you compare the date i was you know 12 off if you're looking at the number of downloads on that date if you're looking at accurate in terms of when we do hit 2 million still to be determined we need to find out when the true date is and then we'll know how far off i was in time ah right i mean do you have new prediction? I do not have a new prediction. You're scared now. Yeah, I'm scared. I'm nervous. Maybe I should just make a prediction and we'll see whether my... Different technique. Natural... No, I'm just going to guess. Exactly, your natural flair for... I think that I feel I need to listen back to episode 051. It might

not have made the cut, but I feel like I thought it would be closer to February next year. Oh, would you like to pick mid-Feb? 14th of Feb. Oh, Valentine's Day. Let's do it. There you go. Okay. I mean, it's probably going to come in earlier than that now.

Between the moment we are recording right now and the 14th of Feb, 93 days from now, we need to get an extra two and a half thousand downloads a day right that feels plausible and for a really rough estimate of how many we're doing a day i'm just going to download total downloads from the year divided by number of days we've done so far in the year oh back 2300 What did you say we need? 2,500 Oh, totally Oh, totally Totally do

Everyone can stand down You don't need to tell anyone to listen If anything, hold off No, don't tell them that I would say That's my prediction However Good prediction

Look, you've been proved wrong a lot in this episode Come on The reason i'm saying this is because if people like oh poor matt he's been proved wrong and beck's really killing it right now so which is an accurate assessment if they want to punish me which is fair enough they should share the podcast yeah tell everyone to listen get us there real fast yeah if we can get it before the end of the year. Oh, no way. There's no way.

That would take, maybe it would take a lot. Be a lovely Valentine's treat. Of course, this podcast wouldn't be existing if it weren't for amazing Patreon supporters. So true. Who we are very appreciative of and ensure that the show can be available to listen for everyone yeah so you listening right now yes so we want to say a big thank you to three patreon supporters chosen at random and on this episode those patreon Remo. Re-mo. Or Remo. Remo. We do try our best to mispronounce everyone.

Justin Begley. Justine Begley. I think you did it the same way but slower. Justin. There you go. Be-g- Big low Scoot Or Scott T There's a spare T

That's it Scott Thanks Scott Great Scott And for our fine Patreon supporters We are going to send you a Christmas card Which Beck designed on a train Before her phone was stolen

If you are a supporter by the end of November You will definitely get a christmas card any supporter at any level we will be emailing you a card so you can keep an eye out for that and if you're at the wizard level or higher i mean go nuts do we have a higher level we don't but you can just type in a number you typed in a bigger number than a wizard you massive wizard we will post you all wizards get a physical card beck and i sign it we post it to where you live please don't live in germany and i think that'll be all right with a card let's hope so and uh that's just to show our appreciation on behalf of us and everyone who

listens to the podcast for making it possible yeah as well as our Patreon supporters. I want to thank my co-host, Matt Parker. That's me. Myself. I'm a conductor. You are? Yeah, sure. Why not? In a way.

I conduct. Yeah, electricity. Yeah. Sure. And so what am I, the ticket inspector? I think so. Yeah. Yeah.

I'll do that. You're on tickets. Yeah. Do you know what? I'm the one. You know how there's always someone who does the little announcements? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Like what what do they call the train guard that works for me anyway that's me beck hill and most of all i want to thank our incredible producer lauren armstrong carter who is i don't know the one that runs all the trains station manager

running around yeah who owns the trains now? It's not nationalized. We have private equity funds. You can tell I really ran out. I didn't really think of how the analogy would continue. You guys, look, I've given you the ingredients. It's great. Put that together. Put it together.

I want to thank Lauren Armstrong Carter, our brilliant producer okay back we're in the office there's a jar of dice yes there is you previously guessed 600 it is fewer than that. Mm-hmm. You also guessed pi hundred. It's more than that. How many dice are in that jar? 486. 486. Yeah. Lower.

Okay. You're narrowing in. I am. I also just took a guess then. That's a good guess. Yeah. I mean, I should be applying some sort of science, but that would involve me getting out of my chair. Getting out and measuring or counting.