A while ago, I asked a standard freshman physics problem about a cart that has rain fall into it, then opens a hole and rain leaks out. Then I gave an answer saying that as rain falls vertically into an open cart running on a frictionless track, the cart slows down, but as rain leaks out it shows no change in speed.
That was mostly correct, given the picture I drew of the hole:
Water leaks out a hole in the bottom of the cart as it slides to the right.
The key is that the hole is in the center. Yesterday, Martin Gales posed a question on Physics.StackExchange pointing out that this makes a difference, because if we imagine a stationary cart with a hole all the way to the left, then as it drains, the water moves left, and so the cart will have to move right a little to conserve momentum. But then once the cart starts moving the water leaking out of the cart is moving…
I spent three hours last night trying to solve this seemingly-trivial problem. (My answer is at the original question.) It’s simple enough to pose to first-term freshmen, and yet I went through dozens of slightly-wrong ideas and calculations before hitting on the surprising answer. Further, once I knew what happens, it didn’t seem very complicated any more, leaving me to wonder what the hell is wrong with my overclocked simian brain. The feeling you get when thinking about such a problem is an asymmetric oscillation of healthy frustration and premature joy unparalleled in other pursuits. I want to be mind-fucked like this every night.
Tags: mechanics, physics, physics problems, problems
