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Sim glitch re: Halford numbers - the paradox of the WORM and the RUBBER BAND

Suppose that a useless PISSworm crawls along a 1-metre rubbe...
Excitant violent people who are hurt haunted graveyard
  08/10/15
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  08/10/15
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  08/10/15
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  08/10/15
hard 2 understand this presentation with the rubber band and...
Stimulating Mental Disorder
  08/10/15
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Stimulating Mental Disorder
  08/10/15
...
Excitant violent people who are hurt haunted graveyard
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Sable Galvanic Den
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Excitant violent people who are hurt haunted graveyard
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Date: August 10th, 2015 3:17 AM
Author: Excitant violent people who are hurt haunted graveyard

Suppose that a useless PISSworm crawls along a 1-metre rubber band at the same time as the rubber band is uniformly stretched. If the worm travels 1 centimetre per minute and the band stretches 1 metre per minute, will the worm ever reach the end of the rubber band?

The answer, counterintuitively, is "yes", for after n minutes, the ratio of the distance travelled by the worm to the total length of the rubber band is

\frac{1}{100}\sum_{k=1}^n\frac{1}{k}

(In fact the actual ratio is a little less than this sum as the band expands continuously). The reason is that the band expands behind the worm also; eventually, the worm gets past the midway mark and the band behind expands increasingly more rapidly than the band in front.

Because the series gets arbitrarily large as n becomes larger, eventually this ratio must exceed 1, which implies that the worm reaches the end of the rubber band. However, the value of n at which this occurs must be extremely large: approximately e100, a number exceeding 10^44.

The exact value of n is 15092688622113788323693563264538101449859497.

Although the harmonic series does diverge, it does so very slowly.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2959236&forum_id=2...id.#28519125)



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Date: August 10th, 2015 3:44 AM
Author: soul-stirring green field

9245872459877474502487245987457264574572487265

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2959236&forum_id=2...id.#28519247)



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Date: August 10th, 2015 6:59 AM
Author: sick pisswyrm legend

LOL, unmitigated 928374897239847982374923

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2959236&forum_id=2...id.#28519429)



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Date: August 10th, 2015 8:44 AM
Author: avocado disgusting quadroon rehab



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2959236&forum_id=2...id.#28519549)



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Date: August 10th, 2015 9:04 AM
Author: Stimulating Mental Disorder

hard 2 understand this presentation with the rubber band and the latex. nobody reads latex faggot and after googling this i see that its not a circular BAND but a ROPE with fixed ends. i found this http://www.theproblemsite.com/problems/high-school-math/2002/long-walk

but i still dont get it. why isnt it the case that the distance between the worm and the end of the rope is getting longer and longer over time, so the worm can never reach the end?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2959236&forum_id=2...id.#28519590)



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Date: August 10th, 2015 1:53 PM
Author: Stimulating Mental Disorder



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2959236&forum_id=2...id.#28520692)



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Date: August 10th, 2015 5:07 PM
Author: Excitant violent people who are hurt haunted graveyard



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2959236&forum_id=2...id.#28522133)



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Date: November 18th, 2018 10:20 PM
Author: Cocky step-uncle's house water buffalo

hmmm...

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2959236&forum_id=2...id.#37260869)



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Date: November 18th, 2018 10:21 PM
Author: Sable Galvanic Den



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2959236&forum_id=2...id.#37260881)



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Date: July 9th, 2025 4:22 PM
Author: Excitant violent people who are hurt haunted graveyard



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2959236&forum_id=2...id.#49087353)



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Date: July 9th, 2025 4:23 PM
Author: frisky cracking lodge personal credit line

fantastic bump

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2959236&forum_id=2...id.#49087355)