The Monkey's Balls

 

The Continuum

Berlin, summer of 1905. I found the Rathskeller in mid-afternoon. A stein of cold beer soon sat before me on the bar. I regarded it with anticipation, and relished the delicious liquid as it massaged my dry and thirsty gullet.

Der Barmann approached, and looked at me quizzically.

I asked “Darf ich ein mehr haben?”

“Nein,” he replied – “Ein stein ist genug.”

Macy's parade. Monstrous floats, intricate construction.

The float that had stopped before me had a flagpole at least 16 feet tall. A monkey dropped a ball from the top of the flagpole. In one second the ball reached the bottom of the pole.

Under the influence of gravity, the ball fell 16 feet in one second.

I hurried ahead to the next viewing station, and waited for that same float. As it rolled past at exactly fifteen mph, that same monkey dropped another ball. Exactly one second later the ball reached the bottom of the pole.

But during that second the float, the pole, and the ball had traveled twenty-two feet along Broadway. A line from the point of the ball's release -- at the top of the pole -- to its location when it reached the bottom of the pole can be visualized as the  hypotenuse of a right triangle.  The length of the vertical side is 16 feet. The horizontal side represents the twenty-two feet of travel by the float 

The calculated length of the hypotenuse of the triangle is approximately twenty-seven feet. Did the ball falll sixteen feet or twenty-seven feet?

Twenty-seven feet in one second? But it fell only sixteen feet when the float was stopped.

Was the force of gravity increased? Was space distorted? Was time altered?

Despite my Germanic heritage I cannot – will not – speculate on any explanation of this seeming discrepancy.