How do you find a needle in a hay stack?

Er, I was gonna cheat and look on your FaceBook, but unless you really are seven years old, the date there isn’t right. (so I’m guessing it’s your relationship)

8 and 18. Doesn’t tell me much, but I looked around and saw the date on the lower right corner of my computer screen. So is it today? Also yeah, the haystack, just set that shit on fire, or go buy another needle. Cmon, tell me.

^ Not yet, others have to try, burning it down…..ummmm…..can’t tell you yet if you are close or not.

Powerful electromagnet.

Burn the haystack, then run the ashes through a sieve.

Take the entire stack, and throw it into a pool. The needle will sink to the bottom.

Metal detector.

I find it amusing.

Walk barefooted through the haystack one time. I guarantee your foot will find that needle.

Radar.

Use a thermal imager on a humid day when the temperature is changing. The temperature of the hay will change more slowly than the needle.

So darn easy! http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/9706033.pdf

Magnet.

Remember where you placed the needle.

A match and a magnet.

@ZEPHYRA Nice. So I only need to weigh the pile (Mp), estimate the average mass of piece of hay (Mp) then divide each to estimate the number of pieces of hay (Nh) = Mp/Mp. Then I take the square root of Nh, sqrt(Nh) to determine the number of readings I need to make per sample access and number of times I need to go to the pile for samples.
That certainly speeds things up. :-)

Now where did I put my magnet and matches?

Buy another needle and say that you found it.

magnet

^^^^^^ So, you have to disassemble the hay stack into smaller hey stacks to be able to find the needle? What happens if you prick your finger on the needle while breaking down the hay stacks, would that make the original plan moot?

Those with magnets
How strong of a magnet are you going to need to pull a needle through the middle of a hay stack if said stack is near 5 ft to 7 ft thick?

@Hypocrisy_Central “What happens if you prick your finger on the needle while breaking down the hay stacks”

Then you win the game instantly.

Match and a magnet.
My task was to find the needle. I’m in farm country and I’ll be damned if I’m going to waste my time over a couple round bails of hay.

^ How would you go about doing it?

I don’t care about the needle in the haystack, I wanna know when your birthday is, gat dangit. :)

^
<hint>
• A very famous man in black recorded an album on my expiration check point day.
• The town of Avezzano, which has a population of about 12,000, is completely destroyed by an earthquake on that day.
• In 1985 Ethiopia a train full of passengers crashes into a ravine with no warning killing nearly all passengers and crew on board ( Over 400 )

Those clues will tell you when I am getting my life scholarship renewed God willing.

January 13th?

^ <ding, ding, ding> Winner, winner, chicken dinner! Now do not tell a soul, less I kill you~

@ragingloli Powerful electromagnet.
To detect something so small through so much material (taking the needle could be on the bottom), it would have to be a magnet of great size needing a crane to position it; and it still may not be able to pull it up.

Burn the haystack, then run the ashes through a sieve.
Burning the haystack is on the road partially to solving the problem, however, trying to pick up all the ashes might be over kill depending on where the stack was, or the needle could be missed while transferring material.

Take the entire stack, and throw it into a pool. The needle will sink to the bottom.
What happens if the hay sinks to the bottom too? Then you will have an underwater haystack covering an underwater needle. If the hay doesn’t sink, then it will float and get in the way of you seeing any sinking needle on the bottom.

@Smitha Metal detector
A metal detector by itself with nothing done to the stack I would think ineffective. If there is several feet of hay over the needle, maybe the metal detector would miss it. If you had to scatter the stack to make it thinner and thus give the detector a better chance at finding it, it can be very time consuming.

@Pachy Walk barefooted through the haystack one time. I guarantee your foot will find that needle.
But if the needle is in the middle of the stack, even the weight of walking on it would not be enough to put pressure on the needle under several feet of hay to feel it.

@glacial @jazmina88 (See above for magnets)

@ibstubro A match and a magnet.
You have two of the items but no process on what to do with them.

So, one way to do it is to burn down the haystack, then grid it off and go over it with a powerful magnet, moving section by section. The second way to do it is like the first only you use a very good quality metal detector section by section to find it. But burning down the haystack is the quickest option, or at least the one that takes the lowest effort.