The Ripcord

Puzzler time.

Okay, here it is. On my street, a few of the neighbors and I communally own a big Acme Leaf Thrasher, a big leaf sucker machine. This thing reduces 400 bushels of leaves into like a teacup. For yard maintenance.

This thing sucks up all the leaves, and anything else in its path, for that matter.

Now, it's a great device but it was way too expensive for one individual to buy. Four of us got together and we bought this thing communally and I was assigned the task of maintenance.

So there we were and the fall season was over, and we had to put this thing to rest, only to be fired up again next fall. All our leaves were taken care of for the season, so I decided to take care of the machine. The neighbors were all watching. They love to watch me work because I'm the only one in the neighborhood that isn't retired.

So, I did all the usual stuff. I put some gasoline stabilizers in the gas tank and I changed the oil and all that. I took the spark plugs out and I put a couple of squirts of motor oil and I yanked on that cord a few times to splash that stuff around.

And then I very slowly pulled the cord until I reached what I knew was the critical position of the ripcord. And then I stopped. And one of my neighbors says "Why are you doing that?

So, that is this week's puzzler. Why did I pull the ripcord all the way out to the critical position?

Good luck.

Answer the Puzzler »

Remember last week's puzzler?

Estimations

This comes from a mathematics professor from a while back. Here we go.

Estimate the number you will get by multiplying the number of hairs on the heads of every single citizen of the United States by each other.

So, you take the number of hairs on one person, and then you multiply that by the number of hairs on the next person. And then you keep doing that, for all the people in the United States.

So there will be lots of numbers multiplied together. And this won't be exact, obviously.

So the puzzler is to estimate what that final number will be.

And here is a little hint in the form of a poem.

"While you do this calculation, please avoid a state of slumber and you'll find with fascination, It's got nothing to do at all with Avogadro's number."

Good luck.