Truman suspects that bright light in the sky may not actually be the sun. What if instead of millions of kilometers away, it is merely hundreds of meters up and attached to an invisible ceiling 'sky'?

He devises a shadow measuring experiment.

He stands a 1 meter stick and a 2 meter stick up vertically next to each other.

The 1 meter stick casts a shadow 3.46 meters long but the 2 meter stick casts a shadow 6.94 meters long. That's more than twice as long!

How high and far is the 'sun'?

If I've worked the slopes out correctly,

x=3.46(y-1),
2x=6.94(y-2)

giving x≈1200m y≈348m.

Nice problem.

Posted by broll on 2018-03-02 09:17:39