Originally posted by SicilianNajdorfYou mean coil the rope up? I don't think that would be a great simulation. As the snake eats itself it will gain thickness, while the rope will gain in only one dimension. Intuitively it doesn't seem like the same kind of thing to me.
What I'm saying is pretend it has eaten itself by putting the eaten bit just under the eating bit , that makes sense , doesn't it ?
Originally posted by AThousandYoungWhat if we consider the snake to be:
You mean coil the rope up? I don't think that would be a great simulation. As the snake eats itself it will gain thickness, while the rope will gain in only one dimension. Intuitively it doesn't seem like the same kind of thing to me.
1) uniformly tapered (like a snakey-looking spike);
2) infinitely stretchy;
3) hollow; and
4) made of infinitely thin snake skin (like snakeskin boots from Walmart).
Then we could have the snake eat itself forever (theoretically anyway). I think the snake would end up as a mouth-shaped disc after slurping its way through the rest of its body.
Originally posted by PBE6I think you're right. It would be kind of like a snakeskin drum. Very taut.
What if we consider the snake to be:
1) uniformly tapered (like a snakey-looking spike);
2) infinitely stretchy;
3) hollow; and
4) made of infinitely thin snake skin (like snakeskin boots from Walmart).
Then we could have the snake eat itself forever (theoretically anyway). I think the snake would end up as a mouth-shaped disc after slurping its way through the rest of its body.
OK I'll go along with out saying that the snake would die before it could finish, because this one had me thinking.
If it was a long snake, being able to coil further, would it not be eating itself that had already eaten itself? 🙄
Its mouth could never swallow its head, or even part of its head, because how could its mouth be behind itself!?!?!?!?
This is like when Stimpy fell into his bellybutton, even though Rhen warned him against playing with it!
Here's what would happen: The snake, eating itself from the tail up, would eventually get to its own head. At that point our infinitely stretchy snake would be eating its own head from the back. The snake would get to the point where the tips of its jaws were eating the back end, and at the point when the tips of the jaws had to eat themselves, the snake would have to turn inside-out. Then, our inside-out snake would continue the process until it flipped back to normal and repeat the process ad infinitum
Originally posted by PBE6Assume too that the snake has infinite length...
What if we consider the snake to be:
1) uniformly tapered (like a snakey-looking spike);
2) infinitely stretchy;
3) hollow; and
4) made of infinitely thin snake skin (like snakeskin boots from Walmart).
Then we could have the snake eat itself forever (theoretically anyway). I think the snake would end up as a mouth-shaped disc after slurping its way through the rest of its body.
That would do some strange things to the outcome...
(that is a strange thought in any case.. An infinite entity along one axis having two endpoints, its mouth and tail)