RE: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] beginner slide rule wanted

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Wed, 2 Jul 2003, Mike Miller wrote:

> > So every year I walk students through the Tower of Hanoi Problem with a
> > small number of disks, establish that the number of moves it takes for
> > the n disk problem is 2^n - 1, and then ask for people to guess how long
> > the 64 disk problem takes if you can do 1 move per second.
>
> I do it as (2^10)^6 * 2^4 which more than 16*(10^3)^6 = 1.6*10^19 seconds.
> But how long is that?  There are 3600 seconds per hour and 24 hours per
> day so there are about 8.6*10^5 seconds per day and about 3.7*8.6*10^7 or
> 3.2*10^8 seconds per year.  So that means (1.6/3.2)*10^(19-8) = 5 x 10^10
> days to solve.  That is 50 billion.

And I screwed up at the end.  Meant to say 5 x 10^10 *years* to solve, or
50 billion years.

Doing it with a computer, I get 58.4 billion years, which doesn't bother
me because I knew I was low and I was shooting mostly for the order of
magnitude.

Mike
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