Reply To: Puzzles
3)
– Holding the thermometer at a position that the top of the building lines up with 40 degrees and the bottom of it with -40 degrees, a sign on the wall takes up about 10 degrees, so its height is about an eighth of that of the building. The sign is 80cm tall, so the building is 6.4m.
– Tape the thermometer to the window with a view to the building. Stand in a position that the top of the thermometer lines up with the roof and the bottom with the base. While standing in the same place, hold a glue stick so that it lines up with the thermometer and the building. (My arms aren’t long enough for this, so I set up slats from old blinds and taped the glue to it, then adjusted it until I could stand in a position where all three line up.) Measure the glue stick, the thermometer and the horizontal distance between the two. Use a map to find the distance between the two buildings, then draw a diagram of all this and use trigonometry to calculate the height. This method gave me a height of 8.8m for the same building. It’s hard to be accurate because a small difference in the height of the glue stick makes a big difference.
– Here’s a method I haven’t tried: Using the thermometer as a weight, tie it to the end of a long string and lower it from the roof.
9) It’s possible that a different player remembered and told her.
12) Start 1+1/(2pi) from the south pole.