Problems for Self-Study

Author(s): Charles Yu
Source: Harvard Review, No. 23 (Fall, 2002), pp. 16-22
Published by: Harvard Review
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CHARLES YU
Problems
for Self-Study
1. Time t
equals
zero
A is on a train
traveling
due west
along
the x-axis at a constant
velocity
of
seventy
kilometers
per
hour
(70 km/h).
He stands at the rear of the
train,
looking
back with some fondness at town M
(6,3).
The location of the
university,
his few friends. His
point
of
departure.
He is
carrying
a suitcase
(30
kg)
and a small bound volume
(his
thesis: 0.7
kg;
7
years).
Using
the information
given,
calculate A's final
position.
2. Assume A is
lonely.
Assume A is
leaving
M
(6,3)
in order to find some
one who could
possibly equal
his love of
pure theory.
A
says
to
himself,
No
one in a town like M
(6,3)
could
possibly equal my
love of
pure
theory.
Not
even
P,
his esteemed advisor and mentor.
A
suspects
P is a closet
empiricist, checking
his
theory against
the world
instead of the other
way
around.
A once
barged
in and
caught
P,
hunched over his
desk,
with
a
guilty
but
pleasured
look on his
face,
approximating, right
there in his office.
3. Relative motion
Across the train
car,
A
spots
B. Assume B is
lovely.
(a)
A
immediately recognizes
that B is not a
physicist.
(b) Still,
he calculates his
approach.
(c)
A
wonders,
into what formula do I
plug
the various
quantitative
values of B? Could
B,
A
wonders,
though
she
clearly
lacks formal
training
in
mechanics,
could she ever be
taught,
in some
rudimentary
sense,
to understand the world
as I do?
(d)
A notes her inconsistent
postulates.
Her wasted
assumptions.
Her
lovely
inexactness.
(e)
He decides to
give
her a test.
(f )
A
says:
If a
projectile
is launched at a 30
degree angle
to the
earth,
with
an initial
velocity
of 100
m/s,
how far does it
travel?
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(g)
B notes his
nervous and
strange
confidence,
his razor-nicked
chin,
his tie too short
by
an inch. An uncombed tuft of hair. She
is charmed.
(h)
B humors A.
(i)
B
says,
Well,
doesn't it
depend
on how
windy
it is?
(j) Ignore
the
wind,
says
A.
(k)
B
says,
But how can I
ignore
the wind?
(1)
Ignore
the
wind,
says
A.
(m)
Are
you saying
there is no wind?
(n)
A
says,
The wind is
negligible.
He
says
this with
a certain
pleasure.
The other
passengers
roll their
eyes.
(o)
A
says,
It does not matter for the
purposes
of the
problem.
Besides,
A
says,
it makes the math too hard.
(p)
A looks at B's
dumb,
expectant,
beautiful face. He feels
pity
for her
meager understanding
of
physics.
How can he
explain
to
her what must be
ignored:
wind,
elephants,
cookies,
air resis
tance. And: the
morning
dew,
almost
everything
in
newspapers,
almost
everything owing
to random heat
dissipation,
the taste
of
papaya.
And: the
mass of the
projectile,
the
shape
of the
projectile,
what other
people
think,
statistical
noise,
the
capital
of
Luxembourg.
(q)
A wonders: can I be with
a woman
who,
however
lovely,
does
not understand how to hold all else constant? How to isolate
a
variable? A thinks:
i. she will see it
my way;
ii. she will
change
for
me;
iii. I will educate her.
B thinks:
iv. he is
lonely;
v. I can make him less
so;
vi. I will
help
him.
4. A
spent
seven
years
(2557
days,
4191
cups
of
coffee)
in town M
(6,3).
He
was
writing
his thesis
(79 pages,
841
separate equations).
A's thesis is on nonlinear
dynamic equations.
(a)
In
it,
he discovers a
tiny
truth.
(b)
When he had written the last
step
in his
proof,
A smiled.
(c)
A's
tiny
truth is about a
tiny part
of a
tiny
sliver of a
tiny
subset
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of all
possible
outcomes of the world.
(d)
When A
brought
it to his advisor and
mentor,
the esteemed
P,
P smiled. A's heart
leapt.
(e)
P said: "What it lacks in
elegance,
it makes
up
for in
rigor."
(f)
P also said: "What a
wonderful minor result."
5. A and B are
sliding
down a
frictionless inclined
plane. They
are ac
celerating
towards the inevitable.
Domesticity.
Some
marriages
are driven
by
love,
some
by gravity.
6. The
three-body problem
Things
continue to
get
more
complicated
for
A,
now
traveling
in an
elliptical path
around B. B remains
fixed,
giving
birth to their first
child,
C.
Doctors and nurses orbit B
periodically.
(a)
Given the
mass of A
(now
80
kg)
and the mass of B
(now
55
kg),
calculate the
gravitational
force between the two bodies of A
and B
using
Newton's universal
gravitational
formula:
F
=
G(mA)(mB),
where G is the
gravitational
constant.
r2
(b)
Imagine
the situation from the
stationary perspective
of B. As
bodies whirl around
you, you
focus on the
pain,
the
quiet place,
the
baby,
of
course,
the
baby.
(c)
Now
imagine
the situation from A's
perspective.
You wonder:
what if the child turns out like its mother? What if the child
does not understand
theory?
You've
spent
so
many nights,
lying
awake with
B,
for
hours,
trying
to teach her how to see the
world,
its
governing principles,
the functions
lying
under it all.
Hours
spent
with B as she
cries, frustrated,
uncomprehending.
(d)
This is what is well-known in the field of celestial
dynamics
as
the
three-body problem.
(e)
Put
simply,
this is the
problem
of
computing
the mutual
gravitational
interaction of three
separate
and different masses.
(f )
Astronomers since the time of
Kepler
have known that this
problem
is
surprisingly
difficult to solve.
(g)
With two
bodies,
the
problem
is trivial. With two
bodies,
we
can
simplify
the
universe,
empty
it of
everything
but,
say,
the
moon and the
earth,
an A and
a
B,
the sun and a
speck
of dust.
The
equations
are solved
analytically.
(h)
Unfortunately,
when we add a third
body
to our
equations
of
motion,
the
equations
become intractable. It turns out the
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mathematics
gets very complicated, very
fast.
(i)
A has
only recently begun
to feel comfortable with his
predic
tions of B's
path,
B's
behavior,
her
perturbations
and
eccentricity
of orbit. And now
this,
he thinks. Another
body.
(j)
B screams with the
agony
of childbirth.
(k)
A looks into B's
eyes.
A wonders if it is
necessary
for her to
scream so
loudly.
(1)
A thinks
generally
about the
concept
of
pain.
A has a
witty
thought
and would like to write it down.
7. Moment of inertia
(a)
A and B are not
moving
(vA
=
vB
=
0).
A is in his
study,
hidden
in the corner. He is
talking
in a
low voice.
(b) B,
across the
house,
is
watching
television.
(c)
A is
talking
to
/,
who is married to S. S is a
good
friend of A.
(d) /is
thinner than B. Sis older than A.
(e)
B is
listening
to A. S is
listening
to
/.
(f)
Also
listening:
the
neighborhood.
Theta and
Sigma,
Delta and
Phi.
(g)
Also
listening:
the social circle:
Phi,
Chi and Psi.
Eta,
Zeta and
Nu. Even Lambda has been known to listen.
(h) Others,
just speculating, say
that A and
/
would make a
good
looking couple.
A
says
no,
thinks
yes. /
blushes.
(i)
S exerts a force on
/.
A exerts a
force on B. A wants to exert a
force on
/,
and
/
would like it if A would exert a considerable
force on her.
(j)
? is
walking
down the hall. A can hear B. B can hear A's voice
growing
softer with each
step
she takes. A freezes in
anticipa
tion,
ready
to
hang
up
the
phone.
(k)
B turns and
goes
into the
kitchen,
pretending
not to hear.
(1)
A does not move. B does not move. The forces cancel out.
Everyone
remains at rest.
8. Partial solutions
(i)
make renovations to the
kitchen;
(ii)
make renovations to
themselves;
(iii) go
on
safari;
(iv) go
to a
"seminar";
(v)
make
large purchases
of
luxury
durable consumer
goods;
(vi)
make small overtures to an
object
of lust at
work;
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(vii)
take
up
golf;
(viii)
find a
disorder and
self-diagnose;
(ix)
get
a
purebred dog;
(x)
get religion;
(xi)
landscape
the
backyard;
(xii)
have another child.
9. Gedanken
experiment
(a)
Imagine
A is
building
a
spaceship.
He is tired of
being pushed,
pulled, torqued,
accelerated. Collided with on a
daily
basis.
Losing
momentum. He is tired of his thesis
failing,
time and
again. Every day
an
exception
to A's Theorem.
Every day
he
recognizes
it a little less?once a
shiny,
unused
tool,
a
slender,
immaculate volume. Now riddled with
holes,
supported
with
makeshift,
untenable
assumptions.
A's Theorem has not so
much
predicted
the future with success as it has recorded
a
history
of its own
exceptions.
(b)
It is
simplest
to
approach
the
problem
of satellite motion from
the
point
of view of
energy.
(c)
Every night
for a
year,
A and B eat dinner in silence.
Every night
for a
year,
A
lights
a
cigarette, opens
a
beer,
goes
to the
garage
to work on his
imaginary spaceship.
Sometimes,
he has doubts.
Sometimes,
he
gets
frustrated,
wondering
if it is worth all the
imaginary
trouble.
(d)
And
then,
one
day,
A finishes his
spaceship.
Even
imaginary
work
pays
off.
(e)
A turns on his
imaginary
vehicle,
listens to it roar. It makes a lot
of
imaginary
noise. B tries to talk over
it,
but the
engine
is
deafeningly
loud.
(f)
B shouts at
A,
right
in front of his face. A sees B
moving,
gesturing wildly. Why
is she
acting
so
crazy?
(g)
The
energy
of
a
body
in satellite motion is the sum of its kinetic
and
potential energies.
It is
given by
the
following:
E =K+U
=
lmv2- GmM.
2 r2
(h)
A watches B
moving frantically
around the
garage.
A notes that
B looks rather
desperate,
as if she is
trying
to
stop
him,
trying
to hold
him,
trying
to
keep
him from
leaving
Earth,
(i)
A's
spaceship
is
heating up.
It is
time,
he thinks. He holds the
imaginary
levers and calculates his
trajectory.
He
enjoys
for a
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minute the low
frequency
hum as it vibrates
through
his whole
body.
His future
opens up
in front of him.
(j)
He is
moving
now. His
past sealing
itself
off,
trailing
further
and further behind him.
(k)
The
escape
velocity, vesc,
of a
projectile
launched from the
surface of the earth is the minimum
speed
with which the
projectile
must launch from the surface in order to leave the
vicinity
of the earth forever.
(1)
His
imperfect
theorem,
his
imperfect
credit,
his
imperfect
house,
his
imperfect
bladder,
his
imperfect gums,
his
imperfect
career, his
imperfect penis: gone.
Also
gone:
the
history
of his
interactions,
his
past
collisions,
his
past.
A has
finally
achieved
his
major
result. He is free from the
unceasing pull
of
gravita
tional
memory.
10. A is in
deep
space.
The solar wind is at his
back,
pushing
him
along
at
a rate of 0.000000001
m/s.
At this
rate,
it will take his entire lifetime to travel a distance of
just
over
eight
feet.
B is on a
space
rock,
watching
A drift
by glacially. Imagine you
are B.
(a)
You are 20 m from A. Close
enough
to see his face. Close
enough
to know his
shape.
Close
enough
to
imagine
contact.
(b)
You have a
rope.
If
you
can
throw it
just right, you may
be able
to tie
yourself
to
A,
turn his
course,
affect his
trajectory.
You
will not be able to
stop
him,
but
you may
be able to make sure
that,
wherever it is he is
drifting
to,
you
end
up
there
as well.
(c)
Assume
you
are of
average strength.
Assume
you
are of above
average compassion, patience,
will,
and determination.
(d)
If
you
throw the
rope
and
miss,
what
happens?
If
you
never
throw the
rope,
what
happens?
(e)
Imagine you
will
spend
a
period
of
eighty years
within a few
meters of this
astronaut,
a man in an insulated
space
suit.
Imagine
it is
possible
to drift
by
this man,
staring
at
him,
as he
makes his
way
into the infinite ocean of
space.
(f)
You will never know
any
other
points,
other
problems,
the
mysteries
of
biochemistry,
the
magic
of
literature,
the
plea
sures of
topology.
You will
only
know
physics.
(g)
You will never know what it feels like inside his suit,
(h)
You will never know
why
you
are on this rock.
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11. Initial Conditions
A is on a train
traveling
due west
along
the x-axis at a constant
velocity
of
seventy
kilometers
per
hour
(70
km
/ h).
He is
carrying
a suitcase
(30
kg)
and
a small bound volume
(his
thesis: 0.7
kg;
7
years).
He stands at the rear of the
train,
looking
back at town M
(6,3).
A
point
full of
sadness,
an
origin
of
vectors,
a locus of desire. A
point
like
any
other
point.
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