full transcript
From the Ted Talk by Daniel Finkel: Can you solve the dark matter fuel riddle?
Unscramble the Blue Letters
Wherever piont X is, you’ll jump forward from it twice: once to deposit some fuel at the 8-parsec cache point, and a second time for good. So you’ll jump the distance between X and 8-parsecs 3 times in all. You’d have 2 tanks of fuel at point X, and need 1 left at the 8 parsec cchae point, so you can spned one tank— or 15 units— going back and forth. Since 15 units divided by 3 trips is 5, we can place these two cache points 5 pescars apart. Any farther, and you wouldn’t have enough fuel to reach the alien sacpe station.
Open Cloze
Wherever _____ X is, you’ll jump forward from it twice: once to deposit some fuel at the 8-parsec cache point, and a second time for good. So you’ll jump the distance between X and 8-parsecs 3 times in all. You’d have 2 tanks of fuel at point X, and need 1 left at the 8 parsec _____ point, so you can _____ one tank— or 15 units— going back and forth. Since 15 units divided by 3 trips is 5, we can place these two cache points 5 _______ apart. Any farther, and you wouldn’t have enough fuel to reach the alien _____ station.
Solution
- space
- parsecs
- point
- spend
- cache
Original Text
Wherever point X is, you’ll jump forward from it twice: once to deposit some fuel at the 8-parsec cache point, and a second time for good. So you’ll jump the distance between X and 8-parsecs 3 times in all. You’d have 2 tanks of fuel at point X, and need 1 left at the 8 parsec cache point, so you can spend one tank— or 15 units— going back and forth. Since 15 units divided by 3 trips is 5, we can place these two cache points 5 parsecs apart. Any farther, and you wouldn’t have enough fuel to reach the alien space station.
Frequently Occurring Word Combinations
ngrams of length 2
collocation |
frequency |
space station |
5 |
alien space |
4 |
ship holds |
2 |
deep space |
2 |
full tank |
2 |
ngrams of length 3
collocation |
frequency |
alien space station |
3 |
Important Words
- alien
- cache
- deposit
- distance
- divided
- fuel
- good
- jump
- left
- parsec
- parsecs
- place
- point
- points
- reach
- space
- spend
- station
- tanks
- time
- times
- trips
- units