THE BIBLE CODE PUZZLE

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Here is another puzzle about The Bible. One of the past posts also deals with The Bible, specifically "The Significance of 40 Days in the Bible". This time, it deals with the words that could be found in The Bible. I have read this in the book "Wonders of Numbers" by Clifford A. Pickover. Read the following verses.

Excerpt from the Book of Genesis

What to do:


1. Select any word in the first verse: "In the beginning God created the heaven and 
    the Earth".


2. Count the number of letters of the chosen word. The number of letters in the word will    
    determine the number of jump for the next word. 

   For example, if you choose the word "God", there are three letters (G, o, d). Hence, jump  
   three words from "God" - that will be the word "heaven".


3. Continue the same process until you reach the third verse.
   
    In the above example, "heaven" has 6 letters. Jump 6 words and you will reach "earth" in 
    the second verse. "Earth" has 5 letters, jump 5 words and reach "void". Next will be 
   "upon", then "the", and then "the". Next is "God", then "the", then "the", then finally reach    
   the third verse. 


4. Stop when you reach the third verse.


    In the example above, which word did you land in the third verse? It is "GOD". 


   You can choose another word in the first verse and do the same process. In any choice of   
   word, you will always land in the word "GOD" in the third verse. Try it!


MATHEMATICAL CONNECTION:


According to Martin Gardner, in his work "Mathematical Games", each of the chain of words will always end on GOD. It is a result of the "Kruskal count", named after the mathematician Martin Kruskal who discovered it. It is a probabilistic concept that ca be applied to some magic tricks (most of it are on card tricks) and code-breaking. 


Gardner points out that when the total number of words in a text is significantly greater than the number of letters in the longest word, it is likely that any two arbitrarily started word chains will intersect at a keyword. After the intersection point, the chains become identical. As the text lengthens, the likelihood of the intersection increases.  

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HOW FAR IS A STORM FROM YOU

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Do you know how to determine the distance of a storm from your location. You only need a simple calculation.  

What you need:  

 1) pen and paper

 2) watch or clock (if available)

 3) calculator

Here is what you should do:

1) Stay in a safe location. It is recommended that you must stay inside your home where you will do your observation. 

2)During a storm you always see flashes of lightning and hear the roar of thunders. Start counting when you see the flash of lightning. You may count the seconds in a clock or watch. If the clock is not available, count starting from "one thousand one", then "one-thousand two", "one-thousand three", and so on.

3) Stop counting when you hear the thunder. Record the number of seconds that you counted.

Photo Courtesy of johnglenn513/morguefile

4) Divide the result:

   a) by 5, if you want to get the distance in miles

      example:  If you counted 25 seconds, divide it by 5. That is 25/5 = 5.

                      Hence, the storm is 5 miles away from you. 

   b) by 3, if you want to get the distance in kilometers

      example:   If you counted 21 seconds, divide it by 3. That is 21/3 = 7.

                      Hence, the storm is 7 kilometers away from you. 

5) Continue doing the same process and record the progress. You can then monitor is fast approaching your location or it is going away from your location.

Reason Behind:

Light travels faster than sound. A leader of a bolt of lightning can travel as fast as 220,000 km/h or 140,000mph. On the other hand, the speed of sound in dry air is approximately 343 m/s or 1,236 km/h.

Lightning and thunder occur at the same time, but we see the flashes of lightning first before we hear the roar of thunder since they differ in speed. It means that the lightning is approximately one (1) mile distant for every 4.6 seconds (~5 seconds) that elapsed between the start of the flash and the sound of thunder. That is also one (1) kilometer for every 2.9 seconds (~3 seconds) that elapsed. Therefore, in order to get the distance in miles, we need to divide the time between the flash of lightning and thunder sound by 5 and divide it by 3 to get the distance in kilometers. 

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