Thread: Timing

Originally Posted by dobbo

burns for exactly 1 hr in it's magic non linear way

The fact it's a non-uniform burn isn't magic. Perhaps the string has been coated in an accelerant, or perhaps not. Either way, it will be oscillatory combustion (oscillating burn rate and temperature - though in typical cases the differences would most likely be minute).

The magic is getting the string length correct to burn for exactly one hour.

But really, all this is irrelevant. We have all the information we need to solve the problem - one specified constant: the total burn time of both strings.

We need to find a quarter of the the total burn time, and we can get that by halving twice.

By burning the first string at both ends, we halve its burn time to 30 minutes. At the same time we started burning one end of the second string.

When the first string has completely burnt, we know we have 30 minutes left of burn time from the second string.

Igniting the other end of the second string, we halve that 30 minutes to 15 minutes.


On a similar note, I'm burning the candle at both ends... so I'm off to bed. Night!