FYKOS Year 28 Series 6 Problem 1 — ...au · FYKOS 28 #28.6.1
Physics · mechanics
Problem
The Turtle A'Tuin, on the shell of which the four elephants that carry on their backs Discworld stand, isn't tiny. Let us assume that we would be bored with the sphericity of our Earth and we would want to exchange it for a circular disc with the same mass and density and with the width h=1km carried by the same turtle-elephant band. In case that the turtle would have hit with the tip of its tale into a planetoid, how long would it take for it to notice the impulse of pain, given that her tail and her brain are connected by a very long neuron? (This neuron is approximately as long as the diameter of the disc) How much earlier/later would A'tuin realise this pain (the length of the neuron is equivalent to its length 18 000 km)? For a numerical estimate assume that the speed of the spread of the signal in the large animals is the same as with normal land animals who experience a speed of v≈120m⋅s−1.