Keep Your Balance

Programme Outline

The Balance of Nature has been vandalised, and the elements must be re-calibrated or the Garden of Reason will be destroyed. With the Wizard attending to more important matters, it's down to Lisa and the Guard to save humankind.

Curiously, the vandal has left behind notes giving hints as to what the elements weigh. Between the notes, the Balance of Nature, and some basic algebra, humankind is saved - as are the goblins, trolls and gnomes.

Start to 02:50 - Setting the scene Lisa and the Guard arrive at the Balance of Nature, where the Wizard explains that it's been vandalised. If the Garden of Reason is to escape a terrible calamity, the elements must be re-calibrated (by weighing them). Lisa and the Guard set to work.
02:50 to 07:05 - Air and Water The Guard discovers a note, suggesting that '[the element] Air plus five kilos equals eight kilos.' Using the Balance of Nature, our heroes verify this, and find that, therefore, Air weighs three kilograms. Moving on to the element Water, they find another note: 'Water + Air + 3kg = 15kg'. Lisa realises that they can substitute 3kg for the box of Air, since they've already worked that out.
07:05 to 07:40 - The Mathematical Encyclopaedia The Encyclopaedia opens to page 4. We're introduced to ancient Greek ideas of how the elements Earth, Air, Fire and Water governed all things. Today, of course, we know rather more than four elements.
07:40 to 09:55 - Fire and Earth Another element, another note. Having dispensed with Fire (which appears to have negative weight, much to everyone's concern), Lisa and the Guard move on to Earth, for which the note reads: 'Earth + Fire + 3(Air) = 32kg' - which is solved entirely by algebraic manipulation. Unfortunately, despite having re-calibrated the elements, the Balance of Nature does not appear to be restored.
09:55 to 12:00 - Equations The Wizard reminds us of the golden rule for manipulating equations: that whatever you do to one side of the equals sign, you must also do to the other. 12:00 to end - The fifth element There turns out to be a fifth element: custard. Once it is included, order is returned to the Garden. However, the question remains of who vandalised the Balance of Nature in the first place.