Puzzle Description:

When you cross a mountain climber with an elephant? (Answer in first spoiler)

#1: ant (agrest272) on Dec 1, 2009 [SPOILER]

Can't be done! A mountain climber is a scaler (scalar)!

Heard this one in college. I don't know why but I love this joke.. maybe because i'm such an enginerd...

If you don't get it, just keep telling it until someone laughs! ;) Or here's a quick math lesson:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_product

Thanks for your entry!
LOL!

*groan*

lol . . . that's much better (or worse) then the inspiration for one of my puzzle titles

[Why is 6 afraid of 7 ? Because 7 ate 9]

I tried looking at the Wiki but there were too many weird letters and words longer than 3 sylables so I'll take your word for it ...

LOL Martin!

One of the coolest words I have seen came from figure 2 in that link... "parallelepiped." :-)

I must have missed something because this was tough early on.

Oh for pete's sake, Ant! Everyone knows you get a pack-a-derm.

...or is that specific to skin specialist mountain climbers?

I thought it might be a "high-rophant" - especially if he is on his way to visit the Mountain Guru.

Mathematical explanation:

A "vector" is something that has magnitude and direction. Velocity and acceleration are vectors, since it matters not only how much you have, but in what direction it is pointed.

Once you start talking about vectors, we need a name for the plain old fashioned directionless numbers like age and weight. We call those scalars.

Now, you can do arithmetic on vectors. Obviously you can add them. 100 mph east plus 50 mph west equals 50 mph east. You can multiple a vector by a scalar. 5 times 50 east mph equals 250 mph east. But can you multiply a vector by another vector?

Well there are a few ways that you can do that that turn out to be useful. One of them arises when a charged particle (like an electron) moves through a magnetic field. When that happens, a force is applied to the particle (which is why electric motors work). How do you combine the velocity of the particle (a vector) with the strength of the field (a vector) to get the force vector? It turns out to be something call the cross product of the vectors. The same form of product turns out to be useful in other situations, including computing torque and angular momentum.

Anyway, by the definition of a "cross product" you can only cross a vector with another vector. Hence this math/physics geek joke.

dang.... i liked the puzzle, already

Math jokes, huh? Here's my favorite:

Three Native American women are each sitting on an animal skin, one on a lion skin, one on a giraffe skin and the third on a hippopotamus skin. The woman on the lion has a son who weighs 130 lbs. The woman on the giraffe has a son who weighs 150 lbs. The woman on the hippo weighs 280 lbs herself. Which just goes to show....








(Are you ready for this?)







The squaw of the hippopotamus is equal to the sons of the squaws of the other two hides.

I thought it had something to do with Dumbo.

What did Hannibal get when the crossed the mountains with elephants? Mountains that never forget.

History joke.

The correct set up for the joke is...What do you get when you cross a mosquito with a mountain climber? Nothing, you can't cross a vector with a scalar.

Goto next topic

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