Comments on: Why Beauty Is Genius

By: Laurentiu Craciunas

Laurentiu Craciunas — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 13:37:47 +0000

This one can be done in a hard/math way and in a genius way, so here’s the genius way

Get 3 bricks, put them one near another and measure the distance between the lower right corner of the left brick to the upper left corner of the right brick. This way you’ll find the diagonal of the middle brick. Here’s a quick painting: http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/8402/caramiziwd1.gif

By: Jed Hawk

Jed Hawk — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 16:09:11 +0000

I didn’t read the word “heap” the first time rounds – oops, that’ll teach me. I assume that every brick is uniform then, from the same mould so to speak.

Well in that case you can rest two bricks and measure in one straight line, by positioning the height of the second brick to extend the flat diagonal of the base of the first brick.

A—-B
C—-D
E
F

By: Dwight

Dwight — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 03:08:57 +0000

Want a hint Jed? If not, stop reading.

If the brick wasn’t there, you could easily measure its diagonal.

By: Jed Hawk

Jed Hawk — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 23:24:37 +0000

I’m thinking of using mirrors but can’t quite come up with what I want.
Mathematically, if the brick has dimensions L, B and H. Then the length of the true diagonal is:
sqrt(L^2 + B^2 + H^2).
I need some way to organise the mirrors in a single plane, possibly on the same parallel plane as the base of the brick, that allows me to measure one line only.

Maybe, since the flat diagonal = L^2 + B^2 I could line that up against the H side, somehow. Thus only need the mirror for the Height of the brick but argh, I could be wrong anyway.

By: Dwight

Dwight — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 00:20:44 +0000

And how, darius, do you get the ruler through the brick to do that
measurement? Diagonal in this problem means front-left-top corner
to rear-right-back corner (or one of the other three equivalents), not
the diagonal of a face.

By: darius

darius — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 20:58:37 +0000

measure it from corner to corner. Unless you want to use a worthless formula. That was easy.

By: Dwight

Dwight — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 14:58:12 +0000

Here’s my solution – you don’t need to post this, but I didn’t see
a link to email you rather than posting.

I assume by “heap” that there are at least three bricks. Create a
“mini-step” by putting one brick in front of you, and stacking two
bricks directly in back of it. Now measure from the top-front-left
corner of the first brick to the top-right-back corner of the top brick
of the two in the back. Essentially you are measuring the diagonal
of where a fourth brick would be if you had created two stacks of two bricks.

Alternate solution: If “measure once” means you are only allowed to use
the rule once (position it once), but can read off multiple numbers, there’s
another solution. Position three bricks next to each as in this ASCII diagram
(hopefully this won’t get clobbered in transmission), but without any gaps
between bricks. Basically from the width of the edge facing you
is different for each brick.

|—| |—–|
| | | |
———- | | | |
| | | | | |
———- |—| |—–|

Now place the ruler across the bottom, reading the numbers where each
brick ends. You can now compute the length of each edge, and use
the Pythagorean theorem to compute the diagonal. This isn’t as nice
a solution. Even though you’re placing the ruler once, reading
three numbers violates the spirit of “using” it once.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 14:29:21 +0000

Hi Geniusbeauty I e-mailed you what I believe is the correct answer. Interesting little puzzle.