Re: Call to mazophiles

["John S. Denker" <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>]

Nathaniel Davis wrote:

> "Stop," the other says.  "I know the ages of your sons."
> What are their ages?

...

> I would like to make a general call for your favourite brain-teasers and
> riddles.  They should be appropriate for the high-school student (no
> in-depth statistics or probability, nor a specific knowledge of an
> upper-divisional physics concept).

The given example is not really physics-related;  it is a
math/logic puzzle.  That's fine, but please be clear what
you're asking for.

There is a vaaaast supply of such puzzles.
I get 6000 hits from
  http://www.google.com/search?q=recreational-mathematics

You might also look at
  http://www.google.com/search?q=sam-loyd

There are also books by Raymond Smullyan and books by
Martin Gardner.  If you want some puzzles with physics
content try Jearl Walker.

Bongard problems make people think, and shed a suprising
amount of light on human thought processes and what it
means to "generalize"
  http://www.google.com/search?q=bongard-problems

There are four puzzles and one riddle (all physics-related)
listed at
  http://www.monmouth.com/~jsd/physics/00index.html

Another classic (from Leighton&Vogt) concerns the bridge
  http://www.monmouth.com/~jsd/physics/gif48/bridge.gif
and the question is, which of the elements of the truss
can be replaced by flexible cables, and which must remain
rigid girders?  This illustrates the power of qualitative
reasoning, and teaches people what it means to _understand_
a problem.  Most importantly, it pounds home the idea that
being smart is not the same as more work!  The smart solution
is vastly less work than the plug-and-chug solution.

I am fond of the 12-coins puzzle.  It involves logic and
information theory, with applications to Design-of-Experiments,
which is important to physicists.  In particular, I renew
the challenge to find a _parallelizable_ solution, i.e. one
where the test vectors are designed in advance, before any
weighings take place.

This posting is the position of the writer, not that of Sam Loyd or
Mikhail Bongard.

This posting is the position of the writer, not that of SUNY-BSC, NAU or the AAPT.