Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for February 16, 2024

Just make up a number. That’s more fun.

Maybe Calvin would prefer riding a tauntaun?

A speedometer for a sled? Only needed for the Olympics Calvin

Pro tip: If you convert it into kilometres per hour it sounds even faster!

They’ll need a lot of rulers to measure the mountain height.

60 miles/hour=88 feet/second

Wouldn’t you rather have a GPS—to know WHERE you were going??

I do the opposite when walking. I know I walk about five kilometers and hour, so I time it and get the distance.

Neil Degrasse Tyson predicts that there’s a 99.999% percent chance they’re gonna end up hitting a solid object and go flying @ss over teacup. So, yeah, math.

Reminds me of my ‘ol sledding hill’. One way down had a ‘bump’ in the middle and IF, you were going fast enough when you hit it, you could actually get ‘airborne’ for a few seconds !! ! !

Math is easy…

Let’s say that the hill is 4 rods, 2 feet, 9 5/8 inches, and that it takes 7 seconds to go down. That means that you go… uh… 4/7 of a rod, 2/7 of a foot and 9.625/7 of an inch, which is an improper fraction that converts to… uh… one and… uh…

Let’s start over.

Let’s say that the length of the hill is 21 meters, and that it takes 7 seconds to go down. That’s a speed of 3 meters per second. There are 3600 seconds in an hour, so that’s 10800 meters per hour, which is 10.8 kph.

Told you math was easy.

Further!

Today, Calvin is 30-something millennial living in his parents basement because his master’s degree in “Underwater Basket-Weaving” has him $80k in debt, overeducated, underqualified, with no marketable skills to secure a decent job..

Sherlock Hobbes.

His suggestion to Calvin reminded me of the story in which Holmes and Watson were travelling by train and Holmes told Watson the speed they were travelling at. “I haven’t noticed any milestones along the track,” replied Watson. Holmes then explained that he had calculated their mileage by his knowledge of the number of kilometres at which telegraph poles were spaced. He had converted this into mileage and timed their passing of telegraph poles with his watch.

I think that was in “The Adventure of Silver Blaze”. My fellow Sherlock Holmes fans will remember that Silver Blaze was the name of a missing racehorse.

Totally agree with Calvin. If this is going to turn into work?!? Count me out!

For Cal, wishing is easier than doing.

Um, Hobbes? Calvin sucks at math, remember? Heck, he can’t even do the basic to save his life!

The sled has three speeds: fast, too fast and “The LORD is my shepherd …”

This is the point when one’s guardian angel steps out and says, “I’m getting off now. Catch you on the other side.”

Let’s say, MACH .5 ….that sounds about right.

Some things are just not to be.

Math will come in handy when he needs to calculate the speed at which to throw snowballs at Suzy

88 feet per second equals 60 mph. A handy reference point.

Not fast enough!

Fast enough to take off.

Love Hobbs calculating on his fingers.

None of my childhood sled/toboggan rides lasted long enough for 4 frames!

What you need to worry about is terminal velocity- in this case, meaning “you’re gonna hit that tree so hard that the coroner needs to scrape what’s left of you off”.

Math is one of those subjects that is open to interpretation. At least according to George Bush, who invented the term “fuzzy math”.

Come on, Calvin, you and Hobbes can do it!

I have a speedometer app on my phone. My riding lawnmower goes 8 mph.

Calvin wanted to do it the easy way, Hobbes!

They call it maths in England? is that right?

Never mind that it’s math, the first two steps sound like a lot of work. You spend so much more time trudging up the hill than you do sliding down it as it is, measuring would involve a wasted climb. And using a timer, eh, getting that just right could be stressful and distracting too.

Anyone else get the feeling Cal has whacked his head on the rocks in the gulley too many times?

He does not want to do the math; he wants to be the math. :)

I thought Hobbes wasn’t good at math?

Human growth can be measured in miles per hour. The figure is just very low.

Seems like only yesterday, Hobbes knew how to throw a snowball faster than the speed of sound…..

In the immortal words of Foghorn Leghorn: “The math is all wrong!”

You could convert to ANYTHING. Even furlongs per fortnight.

Well, it’s arithmetic.

That’ll just give you the average velocity. It won’t provide you with your rate of acceleration, which is more or less constant for the whole ride, meaning that there is not a constant velocity.

This comic has changed so much while i was so busy reading other stuff!

When in doubt about your speed… seek out a cop at a speed trap… they will let you know how fast you were going.

Sounds like Newtonian physics to me

I’d say the bigger problem would be measuring the distance.

Let the machine do the math. That’s what they’re for, according to Calvin.

Distance Is Rate x Time. DIRT Calvin should love DIRT.