Riddle
Imagine a rope that surrounds the equator, precisely. An exact snug fit. Now add 60 feet to the length of the rope.
There will now be space between the surface of the earth and the rope.
How much slack will you get? How far off the surface of the earth will the rope now stand?
a) 60 feet
b) 10 feet
c) 1 inch
d) .oo2 millimeters
Use the comment section to tell us what you think.
10 Responses to Riddle
I would like to thank all of you who took a shot at answering this riddle, and congrats to Fred for getting the correct answer. The reason I posted this little diversion is because it demonstrates an important truth.
At first glance most of would think that the answer to this riddle cannot be “10 feet”, but it is. This demonstrates that our confidence in our understanding of reality is no gauge of accuracy. If we want to be honest with ourselves we can never shut our minds, but instead we should always keep our minds open to correction.
Doovid 
1000 Verses - a project of Judaism Resources 
Okay, where are you going with this?
60
The point is – you don’t always get what you think you got. “intuition” could be way off.
Doovid
try again!
Who cares?
Thinking D, although math was never my strong subject.
My, my, I never thought that I would see this riddle on this site! I have seen this many times over all my years – and like most I don’t really know the answer to this riddle, but I reckon it is 1in.
10 feet; as the perimeter divided by 3,14 is the diameter, and then take half of it.
A snug fit would imply the rope sitting on the ground down the valleys and over the hills touching the ground every inch of the way. If you add 60 feet then there would be 60 ft of slack. The distance from the ground I would presume is unknowable with out knowing the precise length of the rope. But you could always guess.
Larry
The riddle is not meant to be taken so literally – Indeed, mountains and valleys would make the circle imperfect thus skewing the math slightly – in any case Fred got the right answer