• £0.68 - Pork Loin x2 Portions (34p each)
• £0.34 - Large portion of chinese vegetables, enough for 2 days
• £0.50 - Garlic, 3 bulbs
• £0.55 - Large ginger
• £1.53 - Bottle of oyster sauch
  
• £2.15 - Bottle of soy sauce
• £0.50 - Bottle of oil
• £0.84 - Two bottles of sports drink (Ayi thought it was expensive water)
• £4.50 - Bottle of Ariel liquid
  

• One shot of Cuban white rum
• One shot of carbonated water
• A small handful of mint leaves
• Two small limes
• Two tablespoons of cane sugar water
• Crushed ice
  

• Grab a handful of mint leaves and put into a pestle and mortar with a little brown sugar to act as an abrasive. Mash it up!
• Squeeze a little lime juice into the mortar to help empty the contents into...
• A glass, where you add one shot of rum and one shot of soda water
• Fill the glass with crushed ice
• Add the two tablespoons of cane sugar water
• Squeeze in more lime juice. You'll want about 2 small limes worth of juice, or one large one

• Cuban rum is best. Bacardi is fine
• The mintyiness you get from mint is highly variable. If in doubt, add extra!
• The sugar is also trial and error, depending on how concentrated the solution is

Here's a set of physics problems to challenge your knowledge of the concepts of energy and motion. Very few have come up with correct answer to all these problems (question 2 in particular) and I've asked some very smart Maths and Physics phDs! The maths isn't that hard but you have to be very careful about what equations you use and what assumptions you make

Bonus questions are included that any good A-Level physicist should be able to answer but are not part of the main theme to these questions and are arguably not as hard. Usual assumptions can be made in these questions. Partial marks are given for estimates to answers!

Updates

• Assume g = 10 and is constant
• This is NOT a trick question!!! It is all pure and simple physics
• Assume Earth is flat

The questions

Alice, who weighs 100kg, steadly climbs a ladder at a constant velocity to a height of 10 meters and reaches the top after 100 seconds.

Question: What is the minimum energy needed for Alice to do this?

Bonus: What is the person's power output?

2)

Bob, who also weighs 100kg, straps a rocket pack to his back and follows Alice as she climbs the ladder. That is, Bob also climbs through the air at constant velocity to 10 meters and reachers the top after 100 second.

For this problem, you can assume the mass of the jet fuel consumed is relatively small compared to the mass of Bob. However, if you feel it helps your calculations, you can assume that this is a pie powered jet pack. In 1) Alice eats a 1kg pie before starting uses up all that pie power to climb the lader. Similarly in 2) Bob puts the 1kg pie into his jet pack and uses it all up to get to the top

Question: What is the minimum energy needed for Bob to do this?

Question: Does the energy used in both cases depend on the time taken in getting to the top? If not, why not? If so, by how much?

3) (Bonus problem)

Cain, who also weighs 100kg, puts himself into a human cannon and fires himself up into the air, just reaching the 10 meter height Question: What is the minimum energy needed from the cannon to do this? Bonus: How fast was Cain initially travelling as he left the cannon?

Assumptions:

• All energy conversion is perfectly efficient in terms of useful energy
• Everyone is infinitely short
• Bob's jet fuel is as light as you like and produces no heat
• There is no air friction
• ... other usual assumptions?

For answers, email kevin at glorat dot net!

Got an error: mutiple trigger registration in one add_trigger() call is deprecated. at lib/MT/Entry.pm line 282
Compilation failed in require at lib/MT/Compat/v3.pm line 12.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at lib/MT/Compat/v3.pm line 12.
Compilation failed in require at lib/MT.pm line 1210.

--- lib/MT/Entry.pm     (revision 3196)
+++ lib/MT/Entry.pm     (working copy)
@@ -279,8 +279,12 @@
     );
 }

+# Must use separate statements from Class::Trigger 0.12
 MT::Placement->add_trigger(
     post_save   => \&flush_category_cache,
+);
+
+MT::Placement->add_trigger(
     post_remove => \&flush_category_cache
 );

• apt-get install (It should install the light daemon)
• dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config
• Choose mail sent by smarthost; no local mail
• System mail name: Your chosen host name
  
• IP-addresses to listen on: 127.0.0.1 (You don't want to allow external connections!)
• Other destinations for which mail is accepted: Leave blank
• Visible domain name for local users: Your chosen host name
• IP address or host name of the outgoing smarthost:  smtp.gmail.com::587
• Keep number of DNS-queries minimal (Dial-on-Demand)? No
• Split configuration into small files? Yes
• Root and postmaster mail recipient: Leave blank

• pico /etc/exim4/passwd.client or other favourite editor

gmail-smtp.l.google.com:yourAccountName@gmail.com:y0uRpaSsw0RD 
*.google.com:yourAccountName@gmail.com:y0uRpaSsw0RD
smtp.gmail.com:yourAccountName@gmail.com:y0uRpaSsw0RD

• update-exim4.conf
  
• /etc/init.d/exim4 restart just for good measure