I spent way too long trying to figure out why the guy and the ice cream shop were flying, and how he would move horizontally in he air…
I couldn’t tell what I was looking at until I searched for an explanation. All I could see was a person falling into some water past a floating ice cream stall. It’s supposed to be a beach:
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2821:_Path_Minimization
“we have a beach at home”
the beach in question
Yeah, I just thought it was two dudes racing to get ice cream first.
I was more like: but if he choses the alternative paths, he doesn’t get the ice cream - that doesn’t make sense! Then I understood our priorities differ.
!Of course you get an ice cream cone for the swimmer too! You’re not a monster!<
Now I want to see someone swimming with a cone of ice cream in each hand.
As an Aussie, I don’t see why that is unusual. You use your feet. But if it’s only two icecreams, then you hold them both in one hand and swim with the other one. All I can say about this one though is that this is a very flat beach: Waves would ruin the icecream pretty bloody fast. Must be a river or something.
Do people not swim with icecreams in other countries?
Thanks, was disappointed about no alt text 🙏
It is simply polite to include a link to the original https://xkcd.com/2821 as per the Artist’s desires.
Yes, I saw the explain, but that isn’t to the actual origin.
Edited and added it. Thanks for the heads up
If like me you can’t see the picutre of the post, here is the original image:
reveal
What’s up with that? I can’t see any of the pictures hosted here.
I’m not positive but it might be due to the steps the Lemm.ee admin is taking to combat the CSAM uploads that have been happening and prevent the server’s administration team from being liable for potentially harmful and illegal images being hosted on their server.
this was our first physics lesson in year 11 in the 90s
Who could’ve guessed that you were training to be google maps so early?
Somehow he keeps on making awesome stuff, after all these years
Path that maximises time would be some kind of space-filling curve. Maybe it does that off panel?
Basically, yes. The path that maximises time goes around the world, so starts by going up off the top of the screen, and re-enters at the bottom.
Technically I think it could be a little longer by spiralling around the world several times, still reaching the target point despite going “in a straight line”. If we ignore the “straight line” restriction, which some of the other paths already do, then the sky’s the limit. Technically actually, the sky isn’t the limit, and the path could criss-cross over the whole planet first, and the air, and the whole galaxy, before reaching the destination as the last feasible space to arrive at. Personally I think that’s too complex for xkcd, if they are going for complex I’m sure they would have come up with something about paths through n-space and black-hole theory that is beyond my pay grade.
Xkcd good ;)
It would have to be a different panel but you could draw it as the whole screen being black except of the character and the destination.
If it’s a space filling curve as Octoperson suggested, it wouldn’t need to be big. Isn’t a space filling curve infinite length if its offset is infinitesimal?
It’s to do with light paths and diffraction. The time maximising path still hast to be a valid path.
path that maximizes time? just don’t move. at all
I feel it’s a missed opportunity to exclude the ice cream sales and drowning deaths correlation, but that’s just me. I like the maximal time route goes up, though.
Shouldn’t the path that maximizes time have its line go through literally everywhere in the globe rather than just going around it once?
The path that maximizes time would just be going back and forth and not approaching the endpoint.
and I thought this had to do with light refraction lol
Thanks for reminding me that I have completely brain dumped all of trigonometry
