Deep In Thought

In an attempt to stave off mental atrophy i decided to give my self a puzzle to ponder over.

In the past I've take on many puzzles and come to satiable solutions

In the past i had claimed victory over the What Came First The Chicken Or The Egg? conundrum in which i came to the final solution that the chicken did come first. (Deal with it.)

Today my puzzle was this:

Everyone knows the riddle: "what weighs more, a pound of gold or a pound of feathers?"
But could a pound of feathers weigh more than a pound of gold?

This was my thought process:

1. We all know that the point of the original riddle is that it is a pound regardless of how you you look at it (so save your initial comments till the end).

2. So if we weigh out a pound of feathers and a pound gold in an controlled environment with zero humidity we can agree that they are in fact the same.

3. We know also that a pound of gold would be far more dense than a pound of feathers, thus the feathers would take up far more space. from this point we can then assume that the difference between the two materials is the empty space between the components of the material on each side of the scale. (i always seem to imagine this all set up on a old timey balance scale for some reason...)

4. From this point if we move this balance from our controlled environment to one with a much higher humidity the air occupying the space between the feathers would increase in weight while not changing the the actual weight of the feathers. (yes, air has weight, it's just very very very skinny). the gold, on the other hand, with less space between the material would not increase nearly to the degree the feathers would.

Conclusion: The pound of feathers would indeed weigh more than a pound of gold without actually changing the weight of either material.



Of course my other idea was that, i could use the word pound not as a unit of measure but as British currency, in that case you could buy more feathers than you could buy gold... but what kind of smart ass would come up with that answer?



(Safety tip: Stay out of my mind, it's a scary place.)


Exile

Original_exile@hotmail.com