Episode #005, 6.11.2011: Spotlight: How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

Hi, this is Marco the German and this is the first spotlight episode, where I will discuss a topic that, hopefully, is of interest to you.

Today’s topic is a question, which has been asked many times by many people: How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

First of all, what is a woodchuck? A woodchuck is a type of ground squirrel that is found in North America. As it is also called groundhog, the amount of wood a woodchuck would chuck, if it could chuck wood, is equal to the amount of ground a groundhog would hog if a groundhog could hog ground. The groundhog or woodchuck is very popular: There is even a holiday, called Groundhog Day, and there is also a movie about that holiday.

To chuck means to throw with carelessness and to hog means to “greedily take more than one's share“ or to “clip the mane of a horse“ (wiktionary.org).

The standard answer to the question is of course: A woodchuck would chuck as much wood as a woodchuck could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood.
Fortunately, answers.com has some more good answers. According to that website the answer depends on three things:

1. The woodchuck's desire to chuck said wood.
2. The woodchuck's need to chuck the aforementioned wood.
3. The woodchuck's ability to chuck the wood when it is a woodchuck.

There are also many other answers, like:

• Approximately 3.9675 pounds every 5.6843 seconds. So there.
• Using the formula: (W + I) * C where W = the constant of wood, which is well known to be 61, as agreed in many scientific circles. I = the variable in this equation, and stands for the word "if" from the original problem. As there are three circumstances, with 0 equaling the chance that the woodchuck cannot chuck wood, 1 being the theory that the woodchuck can chuck wood but chooses not to, and 2 standing for the probability that the woodchuck can and will chuck wood, we clearly must choose 2 for use in this equation. C = the constant of Chuck Norris, whose presence in any problem involving the word chuck must [be] there, is well known to equal 1.1 of any known being, therefore the final part of this calculation is 1.1. As is clear, this appears to give the answer of (61 + 2) * 1.1 = (63) * 1.1 = 69.3 units of wood.
• How Chuck Norris got involved: A woodchuck would only chuck as much would as Chuck Norris would allow it to, because the woodchuck shares Chuck's name. Therefore, Chuck must punish it and make it chuck as much wood as Chuck can. So, a woodchuck would chuck as much wood as Chuck could.
• During my study of Woodchuck I came to the conclusion that woodchucks don't chuck wood but only drink beer. However, this beer can frequently motivate them towards actions that can closely resemble the chucking of wood.
• It would chuck the amount of wood that she sells seashells on the seashore divided by how many pickles Peter Piper picks.

Obviously there were some tricky tongue-twisters in this episode. If I was talking way to fast, please check out marcothegerman.blogspot.com, where you will find a script of this podcast.

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