Junebugs, Darkness, and You

Originally posted by wolfgang59
OK bad wording.

I thought you were claiming I was wrong... Weren't you?

no

I'm not sure about your 'standing in the corner' theory (I think its wrong) but I was agreeing with the 'you cant add random velocities'. Actaually not agreeing. More 'Idontknowing'

has anyone the answer to the original problem?

Originally posted by wolfgang59
no

I'm not sure about your 'standing in the corner' theory (I think its wrong) but I was agreeing with the 'you cant add random velocities'. Actaually not agreeing. More 'Idontknowing'

has anyone the answer to the original problem?

Sorry if this is troubling so many peoples minds. It troubled mine at night, but now it seems like I'm hitting Junebugs less when moving.

It's all relative, of course.

Theory of Relativity, you know (even though it is a bad name for the theory).

Then you've got gravity's effect on the bugs flight pattern, you have my airstream if I am moving that might mess up the bug's flight pattern, you have one's movement relative or unrelative to the others...

I am so sorry that I got so many people involved in such a meddling question...

I was so foolhardy to charge into that question without assessing how many variables there could possibly be.

But it stretches the old probability and experimentation muscles eh?

I think I might experiment on this.

But I really don't know... ... ...

Originally posted by wolfgang59
no

I'm not sure about your 'standing in the corner' theory (I think its wrong) but I was agreeing with the 'you cant add random velocities'. Actaually not agreeing. More 'Idontknowing'

has anyone the answer to the original problem?

I bet the probability of a randomy moving object to move into the corner is lower than for it to be in the center.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
I bet the probability of a randomy moving object to move into the corner is lower than for it to be in the center.

Me too. 🙂 I think I showed it though, no?

But I also have this gut feeling that it's easier to move into the corner than into something touching a wall in its midsection. Opinions?

I think that a randomly moving object has as much chance of being in centre as at edge or corner.

Consider an infinite checker board plane. We would all agree that for a random moving object there is no more chance of it being near a corner or near the centre of a square.

But if we now consider that every time that object crosses over into another square it is merely reflected back into the original we have a single square problem and the same must apply. Chances of being aywhere in square are the same .. regardless of whether its a corner or not.

(Someone will surely word this better later on!!)

Originally posted by wolfgang59
I think that a randomly moving object has as much chance of being in centre as at edge or corner.

Consider an infinite checker board plane. We would all agree that for a random moving object there is no more chance of it being near a corner or near the centre of a square.

But if we now consider that every time that object crosses over into another s ...[text shortened]... regardless of whether its a corner or not.

(Someone will surely word this better later on!!)

I think the reflection is the key here. If an object approaches a wall, the chances that it will then move along the wall are much smaller than that it will move away from the wall because only two angles out of 180 possible degrees are along the wall.

do more bugs hit your car when it's parked, or on the highway?

Originally posted by Coconut
do more bugs hit your car when it's parked, or on the highway?

More bugs splatter on my windshield on the freeway, but I don't know how many just bump it when it's parked.

Originally posted by Coconut
do more bugs hit your car when it's parked, or on the highway?

freeway, because on the freeway you are going 60 mph picking up bugs like crazy. When your car is still, the beetles have an opportunity to LAND on it, but that is not considered hitting if it can remove itself from the surface of your car. If the bug can walk across your car and leave it of it's own will, or whatever a beetle has...

of it's ganglion...

Then I consider that landing on your car but not hitting it.


It's all relative to the observer in his environment.

That's why it's called relativity.

I think that the bug's motion will always in the long run average towards the center. Near any wall, the average of all possible motions is directly toward the center. In the center, the average is no movement at all, since all directions are equally likely. Thus I think the bug spends less time in corners.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
More bugs splatter on my windshield on the freeway, but I don't know how many just bump it when it's parked.

And by increasing speed you increase the number of bugs that may potentially hit you at any given interval of time. Which makes the car analogy a poor one with respect to the original problem.

Originally posted by Palynka
And by increasing speed you increase the number of bugs that may potentially hit you at any given interval of time. Which makes the car analogy a poor one with respect to the original problem.

Good point. You need an enclosed space to properly model the problem.

Originally posted by Palynka
Not necessarily, it all depends on the motion properties of both. I believe that if both follow an unrestricted random movement*, the chances would be the same. However, the walls may change this significantly. Once you hit a wall, your next direction is restricted and therefore your movement is not unrestrictedly random.

So I would guess that standing st ...[text shortened]... ** Edit 2 - Which wouldn't then be a brownian motion, obviously, for the pedants out there. 😉

Ah, I see you did cover it.

Yeah, I'm sorry but the car analogy just got answered (and it was rather crappy). Now...

back to the original question.