It was a big moment for Odysseus, destined to be the first U.S. vehicle to land on the moon since 1972. The $118-million craft was nearing the end of its nearly 250,000 mile trip last month. Thatβs when mission control realized β someone had forgotten to flip a switch.
Specifically, a switch to turn on the lasers that helped Odysseus land. Engineers thought fast and activated an experimental instrument that was on board. It worked β Odysseus landed! Then tipped overβ¦
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Rough landing aside, it was an epic save. And a perfect example of how technology, no matter how advanced, will never be perfect (exhibit two: Google). Thatβs where good old-fashioned problem-solving skills come in.
And boy, do we have problems. In fact, we have thousands of them that you can start solving right now. |
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βοΈ Black hole sun. The brightest quasar ever discovered is huge β and very hungry. |
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Youβre a musician working on your next hit album, which will include 13 songs. Every day, you sit down to write a song. The probability that youβll succeed is p = 0.1. If you succeed, you get βin the zoneβ β and the probability of you writing a song the next day becomes q = 0.3. If you succeed the next day, you stay in the zone. Otherwise, your probability returns to p = 0.1.
On average, how many days will it take you to finish your album? |
Weβll randomly choose one correct respondent for a shout-out in next monthβs email. |
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Solution to February's puzzle |
Congratulations to Ahmed Adzemovic, David Land, and the mysteriously named βL S,β our co-winners for this month.
Last month's puzzle asked you to find the perfect amount to charge an EV at each stop to minimize the time you spend charging. Charge too little and you'd stop too often. Charge too much and you'd be waylaid by slow charging. The key was to express the times spent driving and charging in terms of Q, your charge per stop.
Check out the full solution.
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βIf I had an hour to solve a problem, I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.β |
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