Babel

The Library of Babel describes a library containing books filled with every possible combination of letters, consequently containing all knowledge—both true and false.


This page is a pretty version of a big Markdown file where I try to note down basically any thing I find noteworthy or interesting.

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Tower of Lire

“Tower of Lire” is a cool-sounding name of the solution to the block-stacking problem.

Place N identical rigid rectangular blocks in a stable stack on a table edge in such a way as to maximize the overhang.

The solution looks like the following and basically, the overhang for N blocks has to start from 1/2N units:

Tower of Lire
Source

If you add the total overhang, you get this:

1/2 + 1/4 + 1/6 + 1/8 + 1/10 + … = 1/2 + 1/2 (1/2 + 1/3 + 1/4 + 1/5 … )

That infinite sum inside the parentheses is the harmonic series. Famously divergent, meaning it adds to infinity.

So the sum of the overhangs also is technically infinite.

I came across this via a youtube short.