I was completely stumped when I came across the following question:
I thought about this question for about 3 hours. I searched the internet for explanations, and I should warn you that practically all of them are incorrect, or miss the point entirely. It is almost an embarrassing question to think about. If I had been asked this question in person, I would probably have shot off a self-assured "explanation" out of vanity, before returning to the privacy of my room to reconsider it.
Many things dawned upon me as I contemplated what it all meant. My conclusion is that there is a different universe on the other side of the mirror. It is a universe of a distinctly different quality from ours. By this, I mean that we cannot mimic that universe without using a mirror (or something similar) in the first place. There are, in quite a literal sense, two universes, and the mirror is the conceptual impassable border between the two. Maybe I am completely off, so please let me know if you have a satisfactory answer to this question.
Of course, your reflection on the other side is contemplating the exact same thing as you are.
Why does a mirror reflect left and right, but not up and down?
I thought about this question for about 3 hours. I searched the internet for explanations, and I should warn you that practically all of them are incorrect, or miss the point entirely. It is almost an embarrassing question to think about. If I had been asked this question in person, I would probably have shot off a self-assured "explanation" out of vanity, before returning to the privacy of my room to reconsider it.
Many things dawned upon me as I contemplated what it all meant. My conclusion is that there is a different universe on the other side of the mirror. It is a universe of a distinctly different quality from ours. By this, I mean that we cannot mimic that universe without using a mirror (or something similar) in the first place. There are, in quite a literal sense, two universes, and the mirror is the conceptual impassable border between the two. Maybe I am completely off, so please let me know if you have a satisfactory answer to this question.
Of course, your reflection on the other side is contemplating the exact same thing as you are.
Eh I came across a basic math equation which sparked some debate, but I thought it's just inconsistency in use of function symbols.
ReplyDelete48÷2(9+3) = 2 or 288?
I got 2 because I took 2(9+3) like I would work a "2x" expression. But if you take that part as a simple multiplication it would be the left to right rule, divide then multiply, giving 288. So which is it? Or is that equation just flawed.
Hello, didn't check my blog for a long time.
ReplyDelete'2' is what I would have calculated. '2' and '(9+3)' are not separated by ' + - x ÷ ', so it is customary to multiply them first. An unambiguous way to write the expression would be '48÷(2(9+3))', but you will start piling up the parentheses very quickly.
And, if there's a debate, it would be on the conventions adopted for writing these.
Remark: In the spirit of this blog entry, the "left-to-right" rule that we are taught in school is ambiguous (as always, try telling it to an alien). The problem is that division is not commutative: 4÷2 is not the same as 2÷4. A prudent practice is to use only the commutative operations: addition and multiplication. The equal sign also works in either direction. Subtraction and division are derived operations and introduced because we are lazy bums!