Listing to Port

1. When the night has a thousand eyes but it still refuses to help you find your keys even though it can almost certainly see them somewhere.
2. When you fall into the trench from which trenchcoats are mined and although your fall is somewhat cushioned it’s been a bumper year at the trenchcoat refinery so it’s going to take you a while to climb out again and meanwhile someone is doing crime somewhere.  
3. When there has been an unfortunate mix-up between dames (female) and dames (pantomime) and as a result some slapstick comedy memes have started following you around with a tuba and it’s become nearly impossible to sneak a moody smoke on a street corner.
4. When you are trying to escape a sketchy, shady past, which is a problem because past you has a time machine and keeps on pinning up sketches and occasionally erecting sunshades around your dive bar habitat.
5. When you attempt to make the streets of this dirty old town less mean by stripping them of all meaning, leaving residents of the town confused as to why there are senselessly flat paved areas all over the place.

1. Consider a perfectly spherical cow of 1 metre diameter and uniform density. This cow needs milking. How are you going to do it?

2. I am pointing a 15 MW laser at the back of your head right now. No, don’t turn around. I’m not asking you to solve this problem, I’m just suggesting that you do have a problem here and asking you to acknowledge it. I probably won’t turn the laser on.

3. Derive Maxwell’s equations. To do this, you will need to use the fundamental constants pi and c. Note: both of these constants are hungry and one of them needs a wee. Your derivation will probably proceed much more smoothly if you can sort out their needs first.  

4. Consider two trains of mass m speeding towards each other. Train 1 is travelling at 50% of the speed of light, and train 2 at 20% of the speed of light. You are a passenger on train 2. Roughly how much energy will be released when they crash, and don’t you think you’d better find a way to get off before answering this question?

5. You are in a Hollywood film in which Love is postulated as the fifth fundamental force. Derive a plausible extension of the Standard Model of particle physics to include the Love Force, based on its observed effects at a macro level (flushed cheeks, hormonal release, last-minute assignations in airports, etc.).