Let’s use Shade’s method of looping the ditch with a noose knot and pulling it tight, then going over the pole, lowering yourself into the ditch at the other side of the planet and anchoring it.
Then keep going back to the pole and dropping longitudinal threads and anchoring them in the ditch. (Only climb back up fully anchored ropes.)
Then create a network of latitudinal threads and knot them at the intersections. Keep this up even going down the side of the ditch.
Now, you can’t tie off a loop at the other side of the bottom of the ditch and have it stay there. It’s not anchored. Forget that idea.
However, now that your side of the planet is covered in an anchored net of rope, do this: Tie off the bottom of the ladder to the anchored rope right at the top edge of the ditch, but so that it can pivot there.
Tie off two 21 meter lengths of rope to the ladder ‘top.’ Then push the ladder over (pivoting at it’s anchored bottom) the ditch and lowering it so that it stops short of horizontal. Tie off the 21 m. ropes.
Climb up onto the ladder, tie off some rope, and now, you can swing over (your body and initial jumb will have to make up for a missing half a meter or so.
Doh! Of course. I still agree that, as specified, it should be assumed it’s rectangular.
Yeah, I thought of this too. The only reasonable answer is friction, which some people have assumed doesn’t exist, but I think that’s a ridiculous constraint (after all, if there were no friction, we wouldn’t even be able to walk towards the ditch to try to get to the other side).
I did think of one unreasonable answer: the depth of the ditch could be constant relative to the spherical surface of the planet, which would mean the bottom was actually itself a section of a sphere, so a loop of unstretchable rope tied around one edge of the bottom of the ditch would not be able to slide. But we don’t have to resort to such silliness if we just allow friction.
Unless the planet is much smaller than the earth, the idea of running the rope around its circumference is much more timing consuming, and will take much more effort than the previous idea of just building a pile of rope in the trench.
If the planet is about the size of the earth and the cross section of the rope is l/4" by l/4", then “one lap” of rope is roughly a cube 23 yards, which is enough along with the ladder to get across.
First of all, I get that the cube is only 18.8 yd across. Second, what makes you think that the rope will stand in a cube formation? And third, even if it did, the chasm is 40 meters across; a 23-yard cube won’t reach. If you managed to make the rope into a dune 20 meters high, 40 meters along the edge, and with a slope angle of 30°, you’d need 27712 m[sup]3[/sup] of rope. This is enough to wrap around the Earth 22 times.
I suppose if you walked halfway around the planet along the ditch you could define that point as “the other side of the ditch” just along a different axis. The riddle might also be a trick question where you are supposed to answer how you get to the other side of the planet, allthough I find the verbal trickery is rather crude in this case if that is what it is.
if you can cut the ladder and anchor the ropes to each end after intertwining it through the rungs you could end up with a ladder/rope braid structure…it may not touch both sides and saga a bit…
there is no mention of tools so that is just a musing.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted days ago by Sock Munkey * If the planet is fairly small, say the size of one of the moons of mars, the gravity would be low enough to just jump across.
I’ll weasel out of this one by claiming that without friction, life as we know it (and therefore swimming and farting) would not be possible.