Season 3 Episode 22 | 6m 12s | Video has closed captioning.
Three tricky riddles! See if you can solve (1) the bucket riddle (2) the clock puzzle (3) the bowl riddle! ft. musician and producer Kurt Hugo Schneider!
Aired: 08/27/18
From:
Hey, I'm Diana.
You're watching Physics Girl, usually a channel where I get super excited about random facts about the universe.
[SPARKS] [SCREAM] Why?
My Favorite questions.
And sometimes a channel where I get to ask random people physics, puzzles, and riddles.
And today, I've got to play it kind of cool because he's literally right next to me, just off camera.
Kurt Hugo Schneider is the internet's biggest music producer.
I'm not a huge fan of YouTube stats, but Kurt's channel just crossed 10 million subscribers and has over 2.7 billion views, with a "b."
But what most people don't know is that at age 15, Kurt became a chess master, and then went to Yale and graduated with a degree in math.
Ladies and gentlemen, Kurt Hugo Schneider.
What's up?
Whoo.
I don't think I can possibly claim to be the most well known music producer on the internet, but I'm flattered by that intro, Diana.
On the internet, I know you as the guy that I've been watching since in my dorm room.
In person, I know you as the guy that makes the people at puzzle rooms bad because-- I feel like if you use locks that are easily crackable and pickable, that's kind of on you.
I'm with you.
So you agreed to do some puzzles and riddles today.
Yes.
Do you have any favorite physics facts?
I don't know.
I mean, I took one physics course.
Only one, uh.
Kurt, my heart.
I was doing math and some music and some computer science, but yeah.
Are you ready for a warm-up riddle?
Yes.
All right.
So you've just crushed two opponents.
Oh man.
In chess.
It keeps getting better.
Yeah, and you stole their kings.
And these are identical, for all intents and purposes, besides color.
But as far as weight goes, identical kings, kings.
OK, so imagine that we have two buckets and not just one.
So imagine there's another identical one over here.
Yeah, I'll be holding it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
In this bucket, there is water.
In this bucket, there's water.
And you're going to drop the kings.
And the question is, in which bucket does the king hit the bottom of the bucket first?
So now, in this bucket is water, the same amount of water in both.
But this one has water that's 25 degrees Celsius, and this one has water that's 25 degrees Fahrenheit.
In which bucket-- In which bucket will the king hit the bottom first?
Exactly.
You know the drill.
Pause the video if you want to think about it and put your guess in the comments.
Video resumes in 3, 2, 1.
Same amount of water?
Same amount of water.
That's your warm-up riddle.
OK.
I think I got the warm-up.
25 degrees Fahrenheit is below freezing, so unless there's something special about this water, this is ice.
So he will not hit the bottom.
Yes.
Damn.
88 00:02:49,860 --> 00:02:50,880 Second warm-up riddle.
On a digital clock, the digits are displayed 1, 2, 3, 4.
You've got 12:34 would be the four digits.
A palindrome on the clock-- I'm sure you know what that is.
The same forward as backwards?
Exactly, yeah.
So it would be like 12:21, or something like that.
OK. What is the smallest interval of time between two palindromes?
Pause the video if you want to make a guess for yourself.
Video resumes in 3, 2, 1.
The smallest interval of time between two palindromes.
Between two clock palindromes.
OK, let me see.
Well, obviously, I mean, 1:01 and 12:21 is only 40 minutes.
Let me see if I can beat that.
I mean, obviously, there's so many other that are 10 apart because you just can change the-- I mean, like 1:01 and 1:11 and 1:21 and all that.
OK. You've got 10 minutes.
Yeah, OK.
So we can do 9:59 and 10:01.
Yeah, OK.
I think that's got to be it, only two minutes apart.
That's it.
OK, wow.
That took me a little longer, but yeah, that was a good one.
That was a good one.
You liked that one?
Yeah.
What did you like about that one?
The tricky thing was realizing, oh, going from three digits to four digits obviously allows you to get only two minutes apart.
Yeah, exactly.
Nailed it.
Yeah.
Whoo.
All right.
You are holding a bowl of water.
That is correct.
And what you don't know, Kurt, is that in your closet, I put all of your instruments with a bomb.
Uh-oh.
Yeah.
I've got to think twice about letting you in my house next time.
Actually, it wasn't me.
It was-- It was someone else.
It was the guy that you beat at chess and stole his king.
A likely excuse.
OK, so that guy put all your instruments in the closet with a bomb.
And now in here is a little sensor.
OK, we've got a weirdly-shaped ping pong ball there.
Yeah.
It's actually a Snatom for those Veritasium fans out there.
At the bottom of the bowl, there's a sensor, and there's also sensor right here.
OK. We need to bring those in very close proximity.
So I'm going to place this on the surface of the water.
Now, for undisclosed reasons, you can't remove the water from the bowl.
So you can't drain it.
OK, I can't drink out all the water.
No Dumbledore.
OK.
So you have to get this ping pong ball to the bottom of the bowl, and you can't push it down.
I can't push it down?
You can't push on the ping pong ball.
OK, can I just get another object and then push it down?
Is that also cheating?
You cannot push directly on the ping pong ball with any object.
Yeah.
But I need to get, basically, the bottom of the flat end of this ping pong ball to touch the base of this?
Exactly.
So the set up again of this riddle-- I know it's a little confusing because I posed it to Kurt initially like this.
How could you get the floating ball to the bottom of the bowl without pushing it down or pulling it down?
But I think the more refined way of asking the riddle is, how could you get the floating ball to touch the bottom of the bowl without touching the ball?
And note, the water must stay in the bowl and you can't modify the ball in any way, or remove it from the bowl.
Those would be considered touching the ball so you can't do that.
Cool.
Check back in tomorrow for the answer to this riddle and to try out a couple of more riddles.
I've been Diana.
You've been watching.
Thanks so much for doing that, and happy physicsing.
Adios.
