Agnes by Tony Cochran for November 18, 2015

If a drone leaves the CIA at 50 miles per hour, and another drone goes the opposite direction at 40 miles an hour, how many people will have been spied on?

Well, that took about 3 seconds – lol

The trains being that they were in the same station became entangled – a quantum pair if you will – therefore distance is irrelevant.

Right, it’s a third grade question. Let’s make it more fun. .. the 2nd train is going West… not South. 

So, yeah. … some of you will jump right in. ..Pythagorus and all that. ..

25 squared plus 20 squared. .Square root of that. ….uh hum.. uh hum. ..

Only. …Hold up there, cowboy. ..

BIG asumptions there….

For one. .who said the tracks were straight?

if the first train travels 25 miles of switchbacks, and the second train went over a small mountain. …How far apart are they now?

IF you mean “as the crow flies” …Who knows. No way to tell.

2nd assumption, that there’s a track to connect them along that hypotenuse.. which there probably isn’t.

The only safe way to answer the question is to say that if you follow the tracks you know are between them, the ones they traveled to get where they are. .They’re the same 45 miles apart no matter which way they went. .

Unless they both went the same direction on the same track.

I loved riding on commuter trains when we were little kids. I remember when they weren’t air conditioned and you could open the windows.

My German grandfather worked for B&O, and my grandmother frequently took my sister and me on trips to Chicago or New York. I used to take my daughters to Philly and New York by train. Not as good as British Rail, but it certainly beats flying.

Simple, isn’t it Agnes? Are you enjoying the math quiz? That silly teacher.

Those problems were the bane of my school experience. However I have seen common core. If I couldn’t learn word problems how could I learn common core? Thankfully I’m out of school. And HA! I told my teacher “I’ll never use that stuff in my adult life!” And I never, ever had one instance where anything resembling it ever came up! Maybe others have, but I haven’t.

Yep, 45 miles, assuming they left at the same time.(This is not stated, so we need to list it as an assumption.)We are told they were traveling north and south, so that crow is straight.Otherwise, we could say 45 miles of track length.

This question is straightforward, so it must be pre-Common Core (there, the correct answer would probably be in foot-pounds)