RAY: Hi! We're back. You're listening to Car Talk with us, Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers. And here's the answer to last week's puzzler, which we haven't even discussed up until this point. Usually --

TOM: Not usually. You say I'm going to give you the answer pretty soon --

RAY: Remember the puzzler?

TOM: Do you remember? This way? Bingo.

RAY: Do you remember?

TOM: Why diddle around? Why beat around the bush? You got the answer to the puzzler, just tell us what the heck it is and stop with all the nonsense.

RAY: OK. Well, anyway, this was sent to us --

TOM: I've been reading Susan Powter's book.

RAY: Stop already. Is that what it's called?

TOM: Stop the Insanity.

RAY: Stop the Insan... Already.

TOM: Already.

RAY: This was sent to us via cyberspace, from Roy Richaude ?? and he writes and I quote --

TOM: This one. Oh, I remember this one.

RAY: While driving around Luxembourg on a recent trip to Europe, how could... How much could you drive around Luxembourg?

TOM: An hour. Maybe less.

RAY: I caught a glimpse of a billboard that immediately brought Car Talk to mind. The billboard was brightly colored with a cartoon of a pig on the bottom. Red herring.

TOM: Red herring. Yep.

RAY: But it wasn't just the pig that brought Car Talk to mind, across the center of the billboard was written an equation --

TOM: Yeah.

RAY: The equation was d, big D, equals the quantity V over 10 in parentheses squared. All of that business. Not all of that business. Just the stuff on the right side of the equation, divided by two. Got it?

TOM: Yeah.

RAY: D equals V over 10 in parentheses squared divided by two. Ha!

TOM: I got it.

RAY: And he says, "Remembering a discussion on Car Talk of a couple of months ago, I immediately knew what this was all about." The question very simply is what was it all about?

TOM: First of all, I am struck by the fact that any country would think that there were enough people driving around who would even know that it was an equation about anything.

RAY: Well, you know I was reading an article in the paper recently about how poorly American kids scored in science and math tests.

TOM: Yeah.

RAY: They were like 97th out of 91. Of all the nations tested and all the European nations typically do much better. I looked for France and they were unfortunately right up there, but Europeans in general, I guess, were a lot more literate in mathematics than we Americans are.

TOM: I guess so.

RAY: And what this equation means is that the distance that you should trail another car on the highway is determined by taking your velocity in kilometers per hour.

TOM: Yeah.

RAY: Let's say it's a 100.

TOM: Say it's a 100 kilometers per hour.

RAY: Which is 60 miles an hour in our lingo.

TOM: Yeah.

RAY: Divided by 10.

TOM: OK. So, that gives me 10.

RAY: Square that.

TOM: Square that. There's two. There's a 100.

RAY: Divide that by two.

TOM: There's 50.

RAY: Yeah. So, of course, the units are all wrong, but that's all right.

TOM: That's all right, but it means if I were driving at a 100 kilometers per hour, which is 60 miles per hour, I should be 50 meters or 150 feet --

RAY: Roughly.

TOM: Roughly behind the car in front of me.

RAY: There you go. Cute, huh?

TOM: Wow!

RAY: All right. What's the equation? Do you remember it?

TOM: D equals V over 10 squared, all over two.

RAY: Of course, while most people were trying to do the math, they'd crash another car. And who's our winner anyway? We have a fabulous prize and who got it, Tommy?

TOM: The winner is from Luxembourg, someone named Diane Swan, from Eeston. E-E-S-T-O-N. Not eastern, but East-ton, Maryland.

[ Car Talk Puzzler ]