Link to comic: https://xkcd.com/2821/
I spent way too long trying to figure out why the guy and the ice cream shop were flying, and how he would move horizontally in he air…
I couldn’t tell what I was looking at until I searched for an explanation. All I could see was a person falling into some water past a floating ice cream stall. It’s supposed to be a beach:
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2821:_Path_Minimization
Alt text.
Of course you get an ice cream cone for the swimmer too! You’re not a monster
Now I want to see someone swimming with a cone of ice cream in each hand.
As an Aussie, I don’t see why that is unusual. You use your feet. But if it’s only two icecreams, then you hold them both in one hand and swim with the other one. All I can say about this one though is that this is a very flat beach: Waves would ruin the icecream pretty bloody fast. Must be a river or something.
Do people not swim with icecreams in other countries?
Do people not swim with icecreams in other countries?
Never heard of anyone doing it no, so probably not? 🤷
It is simply polite to include a link to the original https://xkcd.com/2821 as per the Artist’s desires.
Yes, I saw the explain, but that isn’t to the actual origin.
and I thought this had to do with light refraction lol
It does: Light does not follow the path of minimal distance between two points, but the path of minimal time. This is called Fermat’s principle.
Because water has a higher refraction index than air, light is slower in it and therefore takes a longer time to travel through it. Thus, it takes less time to take a longer path that spends more time in the air.
Fun fact: The underlying law of this principle is the principle of least action. This is the most basic law of nature we know of and can be used to derive all of physics.
I’d add to this that, if I’m not mistaken, it’s because light takes all possible paths and the average measured time is longer
If like me you can’t see the picutre of the post, here is the original image:
reveal
I’m not positive but it might be due to the steps the Lemm.ee admin is taking to combat the CSAM uploads that have been happening and prevent the server’s administration team from being liable for potentially harmful and illegal images being hosted on their server.