Wrong Floor.

[answerbok]

A man lives in a flat on the 13th floor. Every day that he goes out, he takes the lift [elevator] to the ground floor but on his return he takes the lift only to the seventh floor, and walks the rest of the way up the stairs. He doesn't visit anyone on the seventh floor nor does he need the exercise. Can you explain his odd behaviour?

[Ewood27]

The last time I heard this (a long time ago) he was too short to reach above the seventh button.

[Hippy]

In a similar vein:

Two men jump out of high buildings of the same dimensions at exactly the same instant; one man is in New York (USA not North Tyneside!) and the other man is in London. They both jump from the 12th floor window of their respective buildings. Which man will hit the ground first?

[sddsddean]

Obviously a very thick short person. After the first day he should have taken a walking stick or something with him to poke the correct button.

[Ewood27]

OK Hippy, I reckon the NY man hits the ground first. The 12th floor he jumped from is what we would call the 11th, so he has some ten feet less to go.

[shybearuk]

I love these things. They used to do them on Radio One in the afternoons years ago, so here's one of my favourites. A man is standing in a telephone box with his arms through panes of glass on both sides having bled to death. The telephone receiver is off the hook. He didn't commit suicide, and wasn't murdered. What happened?

[Ewood27]

"The one that got away was this big."

[football]

Ewood27 answer & on rainy days he went straight home to the 13th floor because he had an umbrella.

[boognish76]

Obviously the London man would hit the ground first as London is 5 hours ahead of NY!

[Hippy]

Ewood27 got it just about right. In the USA what we call the Ground Floor is called the first floor. So in the UK there is in effect a floor zero and therefore the Londoner would survrive marginally longer, having to fall the distance of 12 floors whilst the USA man needs only fall 11 before hitting the ground (not counting the floor they started on as they would not have to fall through that one).

[skelly]

And the chances are that the American man would have been fatter and heavier than the British guy, so surely this would have made him fall faster?

[maxi29]

Oh dear Skelly. Galileo demonstrated (or so legend has it) that the idea that speed of descent is proportional to weight, as proposed by Aristotle was not true. He supposedly did tbis by dropping two balls of different weights from the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The legend might not be true, but he was right about the weight. Two objects released at the same time from a great height will hit the ground simultaneously.