[Husker] And now Mizzou! (fwd)

[Mike Nolan]

> Well, that all depends on whether the coin is a Nebraska state quarter or a Missouri one. Also, who is flipping the coin? Is there wind to influence the flip? ;)

I haven't tested any of the state quarters, but I did test the 'sandwich'
quarter versus a silver quarter some years ago, by doing over 1000 coin
flips with 5 quarters of each type, flipping  onto a solid surface.  This 
took me quite a few hours, about 2 1/2 days as I recall, but it was
before we had the Internet to consume all our spare time.  :-)

My conclusion was that the sandwich quarter was slightly more biased in 
favor of heads than a silver quarter was.  I think it has to do with
the physics of the surfaces.

BTW, one of my favorite stats-related questions in college was this:

You're given a number of quarters and a roll of tape.  How many quarters
do you have to tape together in a stack until the odds are roughly
even that you will get 'heads', 'tails', or 'edge'?

It turns out there is a solution to the problem based on the ratio of the 
diameter of the coin to its thickness, but it is a non-trivial problem in 
mechanical dynamics.

Engineers are weird, another bull-session question we used to debate 
had to do with how hard the Jolly Green Giant would have to push on the
John Hancock building in Chicago to topple it.  (This one is related to 
the wind strength question that engineers have to consider when analyzing 
the plans for a tall bulding, so it isn't just an 'academic' issue.)
--
Mike Nolan