So, I post on Livejournal, and I subscribe to a group called Metaquotes, where folks basically post quotes from their friends LJ’s that they find to be funny or meaningful (usually funny).
Today, someone posted a math word problem they wrote called “The Burning Goat”
It is not recommended that you drink anything while reading this, and it is very much worth reading. 
What’s worse is, I worked out the problem. Did anybody get the same answer as I did?
It’ll take the goat 1.068+ hours to reach the lake – so it dies a terrible death first.
Within sight of the lake, no less.
I calculated that the goat died 2,182 feet, 4.848 inches from the lake. Would that be within sight, or did I screw up the calculation? Could a goat see a lake that is about 7 football fields away, assuming flat ground?
African or European goat?
Neither. Considering how fast it was traveling initially, I’d say it was more like a white-tailed deer. Or possibly an elephant.
hahahah, an entire thread in spoiler boxes!
[spoiler]I got about the same: .414 miles or 2185 feet and 11.04 inches. Obviously I did not bother to round carefully. Here’s my math, for anyone who wants to try to decipher pencil scratching via digital photography. There’s some math there that didn’t make it, like the conversions to miles, etc.
Part One: sketch of farm and goat’s path
Part Two: Pythagorean Theorem
Part Three: Fun with Cross Products[/spoiler]
OK, I misread that as being ~4.8 inches, rather than two thousand feed and change, plus 4.8 inches. I was about to say, I HOPE the damn goat can see something 5 inches in front of his face. :smack:
Myopic, burning goat?
I burning your blind goat!
quote=palmer_kun So we have a Level 500 goat, with 2250 HP, and it lives! /quote :eek:
Must be a 1920s style burning goat.
There are a number of possibilities for the goat’s apparent resilance to flame.
[ol]
[li]The Goat is Very Very Strong[/li][li]The Goat is wearing a sweater made from fire-retardant material[/li][li]Hi Opal![/li][/ol]
I got what Scuba Ben got, but I don’t get it.
It’s a D&D thang?
I solved it too, but I forgot how to make a spoiler, so I’m going to improvise a reverse spoiler. From the 1st **** to the 2nd ****, highlight that text to read it.
Assuming the goat is smart and it runs along the hypotenuse of the triangle, it’s dead Jim. It will get to the lake in 64 minutes, so maybe it will just be badly scarred? If it dies upon en-flamation, it dies 0.8 miles short of the lake. I think I made some rounding errors though.
I’m pretty good at algebra and geometry, but Calculus hurts my head 
Nope. Can’t see a thing. 
The tag for making spoiler boxes is {SPOILER}{/SPOILER}, with straight brackets instead of the curly ones, and with the spoiler in question going in between the boxes, just like a quote would.
The goat was running well once, for 20 minutes! (rounding down ;))
[Spoiler]Thanks, now I’ll copy-paste my ghostly text here 
Assuming the goat is smart and it runs along the hypotenuse of the triangle, it’s dead Jim. It will get to the lake in 64 minutes, so maybe it will just be badly scarred? If it dies upon en-flamation, it dies 0.8 miles short of the lake. I think I made some rounding errors though.
[/Spoiler]
[SPOILER]You’re all nerds!
I knew there was a reason I liked you.
The maths makes my head hurt, but I have him dying about five miles away from the lake… am I doing something wrong?
[/SPOILER]
He’s dead Jim. I ball parked the math in my head, and saw the goat was a gonner.
