enthalpy

Saturday, July 10, 2004


Finally, we can put an end to the age-old question: Who is more annoying, math geeks or baseball geeks? I think this article clearly proves, it's math geeks.
Home base shall be marked by a five-sided slab of whitened rubber. It shall be a 12-inch square with two of the corners filled in so that one edge is 17 inches long, two are 8 1/2 inches and two are 12 inches.

Something about these numbers puzzled Bradley. "Wait a minute," he thought. "That 17 should be 12 times the square root of 2. It can't be an integer. It has to be an irrational number."

Indeed, the diagram implies the existence of a right triangle with sides 12, 12, and 17, and that's not quite a Pythagorean triple: 122 + 122 = 288 and 172 = 289.

At first, the discrepancy bothered Bradley.
Bradley needs a date.



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