The Rabbit and the Wall.

Just something I remembered being discussed in an english call back in highschool.

So theres a rabbit, sitting about three feet from a wall(not that the distance really matters or anything), and every time the rabbit hops it gets exactly one half of the remaining distance closer to the wall. So on the first hop it ends up one and a half feet, second hop nine inches, third hop four and a half inches, so on and so forth. now keep in mind that this rabbit is super precise, down to a molecular level. the question i have for you is will the rabbit ever reach the wall.

I will post my opinion on this after reading a few responses, cuz i just wanna see what yall think before i throw my two cents into this whole thing.

 

theoretically no

 

The rabbit will never reach the wall IF the precision of the length of its hops is infinite...

...But that cannot be realizeable, because the rabbit's body is composed of atoms, which are, by nature, finite in precision. 'Course it also depends on the rabbit's frame of reference. In a vacuum, this might be possible, were it not for the fact that the poor rabbit would explode due to the lack of atmospheric pressure holding it together...

 

umm. this is stupied.............no

 

this is not stupid, thank you.
ger.
anyway, yeah of course the rabbit will never reach the wall, but once it gets down to the point that there is a singular atom, and it jumps half the distance of that single atom, well this all made sense before but its kinda iffy now, the rabbit would become one with the wall without ever reaching the wall.

 

that is correct

 

wouldn't such fusion result in atomic explosion destroying both rabbit and wall

 

Yup. I think it may actually completely end existence.

 

well awesome, my little rabbit can destroy you all with one little hop so watch out.

 

what an awesome thread loving it trippy, :love:
terry pratchett has a philosopher called xeno on the discworld he writes about; xeno
said if you shot an arrow at a tortoise, by the same reasoning, the tortoise would never get hit...
unfortunately for xeno, the tortoise gave evidence in court, as well as showing the arrow-shaped hole in his shell... :lol:

and atoms are not really finite in precision, are they? in quantum terms, it has been found that a lot of the time they are not really there at all...

 

Well thank you very much, it was probably the most fun i had ever had in english. People where shouting, slaming stuff down on their desks, it was an intense debate that day...sure was.

 

check out some of the sub-atomic stuff... it gets even more mind-blowing. brian greene tells us in "fabric of the cosmos" that a photograph has been taken of the same photon in two places at once ...wheeeee :hurray:

 

perhaps the rabbit would breach the membrane of this dimension WHAT

 

According to physicists, there are subatomic particles called quarks, so it's possible your rabbit could go beyond the precision of a mere atom. Furthermore, quarks are the smallest particle physicists have been able to prove the existence of, that doesn't mean there aren't smaller particles. There's a theory that if each atom is like a small solar system with electrons cruising around nuclei like planets revolve around stars, there could be solar systems, even galaxies, within galaxies, add infinitum, then your rabbit could in theory hop smaller and smaller steps throughout eternity, but we'd have no way to measure the size of the steps, because there are no scales small enough.

 

but quarks are parts of an atom and it would be jumping half of the distance of an atom which is what would make it merge with the wall. so by the time it had to jump that small of a distance then it would be too late because it and the wall would be one, then none.

 

It depends on how you define the boundary of the wall. By my definition the rabbit would never become one with the wall. Even if the distance between it and the closest atom comprising the wall were infinitesimally small, there would still be a distance, which might seem huge if you're one of those dudes living on a planet in one of those subatomic solar systems.

 

myellow, you have the same sig as roffa; did he get it from you, did you get it from him or did you both, independently, get it from its source (donovan) i wonder...
whichever, it is in my koan collection. as is what the particle physicists call quantum entanglement.

(btw i like your occupation)

 

We must've both independently got our sigs from Donovan (I know that's where I got mine). Either that, or this roffa character musta been so impressed with my internet presence as to want to emulate me on some level (doubtful).

The rabbit would never breach the membrane that is the wall because, by definition, the distance in question would be the shortest path between the closest subatomic particle in the wall to the closest subatomic particle in the closest hair follicle on the rabbit's paw or nose or whatever. The question then would be what would happen if the rabbit and the wall came too close to a black hole, which might alter the framework of our definition of distance? Yeah, I'm talking out my ass, but just try and wrap your mind around that one.

Interesting that the original post came about as a subject of a discussion in an English class. If you really wanna get blown away, take a course in Metaphysics in the Philosophy department, that's where it's at...

 

Trippy, in mathematics the concept is the asymptote. The idea is that a line on a graph can get closer and closer and closer to a certain line and never actually touching it.

 

Exactly, the function is asymptotic, but in a discrete vs analog way. It could also be expressed as a limit, like in Calculus.