Explorer Explanation: Newsletter Challenge (February 2020)

That's a Polar bear and has what is perceived as a white coat....

The bear's fur is white, but his skin is black. And the fur may appear as other colors, depending on how it reflects the colors of the environment.

The indigenous Canadian Inuit have always hunted the Polar Bear for its fur and meat, but with only arrows and spears for weapons, a direct encounter with the great bear was very dangerous. Here is one method they used to lessen the danger:

Whale baleen is very springy and strong. The Inuit would coil up short sharp lengths of whale baleen and encase the coils in balls of whale or seal blubber. They would tie up the blubber to keep the baleen coiled inside, then set the blubber balls out to freeze (hence the expression - freeze your balls off). When the balls were frozen the wrapping was untied, and the baleen would be held in its coil by the frozen blubber.

The frozen blubber balls were carried out to the hunting grounds and scattered in an area frequented by Polar Bears. When a bear gobbled up these tasty treats, the warmth in its stomach would thaw the blubber balls and the sharpened baleen sticks would spring open, piercing the bear's stomach. The Inuit would keep their distance, and follow the bear until it became so weakened by internal bleeding that they could approach and kill it with their spears.

Interesting, but, the expression "cold enough to freeze your balls off" is much more likely to have originated from the practice of storing cannon balls in pyramids on a frame or tray, made from brass, called a monkey; brass has a much higher temperature coefficient of expansion than iron, and, in very cold weather the brass would shrink and stretch until the ice joints broke and the cannon balls would jump off and roll all over the deck. So the original expression was "cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey".

It was just my lame attempt at humour. I had no idea the origin of the expression, and since the described old Inuit method of killing a polar bear is little known, it is an improbable connection. Cannon balls on a brass monkey - I'll put that in the important trivia file.

Actually, no Polar Bear has ever been seen within 100 miles of the north pole, so judging from the behavior of the explorer, stumbling around in one direction and then in another, he is confused, disoriented, exhausted, and probably hallucinating. I submit therefore that the "bear" he saw was a southern brown bear. The vision brought a cry of delight to his lips, because in his overwrought condition he thought he had hiked right out of the arctic and into the warmth and safety of southern climes.

Supplementary Question (for bonus point): Why would those familiar with the writings of Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky have an advantage in answering this blog problem?

Readers of Dostoevsky might recall that in his "Winter Notes on Summer Impressions" he wrote, "Try to pose for yourself this task: not to think of a polar bear, and you will see that the cursed thing will come to mind every minute." So those readers would have an advantage in solving this month's challenge. Recent psychological studies have established the truth of Dostoevsky's "white bear" theory.

For once one I knew the answer to , but SE beat me to it. Now what I want to know is what conspiracy theory Lyn will come up with for this.

Greyish and probably a koala and if the drunken bastard hurts it I'll thump him.

Clearly the man is drunk - for if he went one mile due south then turns right and walks one mile due west then turns right again and walks one mile due north he's not at "exactly at the point from which he started" so he's lost and in Australia

If this explorer was at the North pole, would his compass be accurate enough to determine direction at only a mile from the centre of, I suspect, magnetic North?

He was using GPS. A compass is pretty useless near the pole, North is almost straight down, and the magnetic pole is somewhere in Canada, and it moves around.

The bear is actually a lady Russian pole vaulter in a fur coat on holiday in the warmth from siberia, besides I couldn't tell the difference.

Whoever voted that off-topic is spectacularly incompetent. It is very strictly ON topic.

I got it. You walk south towards the south pole to a circle with a circumference of 1, 1/2, 1/3, ... or 1/n miles circling the pole 1, 2, 3, ... or n times (i.e. 1 mile), then walk back north to your original position. Clever.

Not original with me, though. It occurred in a Martin Gardner "Mathematical Games" column several decades ago.

Although mathematically correct (you arrive to where you started), there is no chance to find a bear there - there are no bears in Antarctica. So, the only solution (satisfying all the requirements) is the Arctic one.

There are also no bears at the north pole. Polar bears do not go that far north. Yes, they live in polar regions, but not at the north pole.

Well, in this case the challenge is wrong - you cannot find any bear when you return to the starting point. Unless, somebody transported the bear there - and in this case it can have any color a bear can have (and it also can happen in both Arctic and Antarctic regions). But in this case the challenge has no valid answer, so this case is not valid (and we remain with a wrong challenge, having no valid answer).

Or the challenge is valid and the bear arrived there by an unlikely (but not impossible) chance - and this can only happen in the Arctic region. And the bear can have a single possible color - white. So, now we have a valid challenge with a valid answer.

Choose between the two.

I will accept the challenge as valid if it is amended to read: "… The explorer finds himself exactly at the point from which he started, which is now occupied by a wild bear that got there by an unlikely (but not impossible) chance. What colour is the bear?"

But since many here are familiar with this puzzle, I suggest a more radical amendment: "... The explorer, during his walk, sees a Norwegian flag. Where is he?"

Answer: Antarctica. The flag was planted at the South Pole by Roald Amundsen in 1911. The explorer can't be at the North Pole because the ice sheet is constantly moving and therefore flags of even recent Norwegian expeditions to the North Pole would be gone. The explorer, of course, fulfilled the puzzle (south/west/north) requirements by taking the route described by Tornado.

He ended up at the north pole, so when he got back he was greeted by the same wild BEAR landscape, or should I say BEAR seascape clear of ice? The BEAR seascape would be BLUE.

Or maybe the wild BEAR landscape was coloured GREEN ? https://phys.org/news/2020-01-global-science-team-red-arctic.html

If the earth is a spheroid, wouldn't this hold true wherever he was walking?

3 right angles on a sphere equals 180 degrees...

http://www2.lowell.edu/users/massey/3_Spherical_Triangles.pdf

If, however the earth is flat.... well, nevermind...

The question says "occupied by a wild bear" but make no mention of a pole, north or south, for the very good reason they don't exist there.

So all the very cute answers about a course coming back to meet itself are patently wrong (no GPS mentioned either) and rely on evidence not to hand - making something evidence to suit a pretty hypothesis doesn't make it evidence.

Taking a trek from the north pole to the south, in a roughly (very roughly) direct route you get (obviously there are other lines but this be an example);
Alaska /Siberia, Japan, China, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia. New Guinea (pretty sue Indonesia does as well) and Australia - all have bears of sorts, wild bears - but in each of those locations the course becomes 3 bearings that don't give a close (check with a surveyor or navigator).

Maybe the question would have read better and made more sense by starting with "An explorer is checking out his surroundings. He walks one mile due south. He then turns right and walks one mile due west. After that, he turns right again and walks one mile due north. The explorer finds himself exactly at the point from which he started, where is the explorer?"

Then you can ask the number of places on earth where that is possible?

White. It is a polar bear. The explorer set off from the North Pole.

The explorer could be anywhere in the universe because at one of those turns, the explorer pushed the button on the improbability drive.

What colour is 64?

Since no Bears are found at the north pole the bear was transported there by some other entity. If it was a human enterprise it would likely be black, brown, or white. If however it were transported there by space aliens then I would expect it to look more like these sheep. Space aliens do have a sense of humor!

GIVEN: The explorer is on Earth.

GIVEN: The Earth is a sphere.

GIVEN: The Earth has established directions.

The first one mile trek "due South" occurs on a (any) meridian (this has to happen).

To make a "true right turn" and walk an additional mile (West), the explorer must trek westward on a parallel (this also has to happen).

To make a second "true right turn" and walk a third mile (North), the explorer MUST again be upon a meridian.

Therefore, for the explorer to start and end at exactly the same place (following the directions shown) he must have started at the (at all) meridians convergence point which is, in this case, the North pole.

As for the bear, it would probably be perceived as white and be a polar bear taking a polar route from one of the Northern Canadian territories to, perhaps, Siberia.

White.......

Most people have guessed the correct answer -- the bear is white, since the explorer started at the North Pole. However, that's not the only correct answer. Can you think of somewhere else on the globe where this puzzle would make sense? Hint: there are not necessarily wild bears in some of these other locations.

Someone please easy my anguish - search as I may I can find no mention, or any hint of the north pole or polar bears within either the question or the prelude - please highlight and enlighten me...or is jumping to assumptions the new engineering?

An explorer is checking out his surroundings. He walks one mile due south. He then turns right and walks one mile due west. After that, he turns right again and walks one mile due north. The explorer finds himself exactly at the point from which he started, which is now occupied by a wild bear. What color is the bear?

Ignoring those circles around the south pole.

The north pole is the only place you can walk a mile South, a mile West, a mile North and end up where you started.

Think about it such a journey near the equator will end a mile West of the starting point; if you start in the Northern hemisphere then you will end up very slightly less than a mile West; If you start in the Southern hemisphere then you will end up very slightly more than a mile West. The closer you get to the poles that "slight" correction becomes more significant until the extreme cases in question.

The bear is most assuredly WHITE!!!!

Nice too, if the explorer decides to build there, each side of his dwelling would have a southern exposure as well!!!

The colour of the bear is white. The explorer is standing at the North Pole to begin with after walking 1 mile south down a longitudal line, a right turn of 90 degrees walking 1 mile along a line of Latitude and finally a further 90 degree right turn and walk for 1 mile north along a line of longitude will bring him back to the North Pole where I would suggest he run in any direction having encountered the white polar bear.

FatBaz

It could be a black bear, if the explorer started on the top of Bear Mountain (NY).

The bear is tan of course. There are no polar bears or black or brown bears at the north pole, nor at the south pole. However, we do know from published documentary accounts that Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin went on an expedition to the north pole. Clearly the bear is Winnie the Pooh. I'm not so sure he would be called "wild," but that is a far more subjective description than "white" or "brown" or "grizzly," so I'm willing to believe that a 7-year-old explorer or a piglet or a donkey might call Winnie the Pooh a wild bear.

He sure would be wild if he was left with no honey.