IQPOTD - IQ Problem Of The Day
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Suppose you have twelve balls, they all look the same. One of them has a different weight while the rest are identical. You are given a scale that you can place two subgroups of the balls on it to see which subgroup is heavier. You can decide how many balls goes into each subgroup. You don't know the exact weight of each subgroup, but you are allowed to remember which balls belong to which subgroup (the heavier one or the lighter one). The problem is that you have to find a way to single out the ball that has a different weight by using the scale only three times. No formal education or special knowledge is required, but it does take some creative thinking. There are multiple answers, by the way. A. If you can do this within one hour, you are extremely smart, maybe one in a million. B. If you can do this within one day, you are still pretty smart. C. If you did it in less than 10 minutes, then you are just lucky or you have done a similar problem before. ;)[
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I've never seen a problem like this before, and it took me just over 3 minutes to solve it. Does that mean I'm one in a thousand-kagillion? :P Was fun though!
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Suppose you have twelve balls, they all look the same. One of them has a different weight while the rest are identical. You are given a scale that you can place two subgroups of the balls on it to see which subgroup is heavier. You can decide how many balls goes into each subgroup. You don't know the exact weight of each subgroup, but you are allowed to remember which balls belong to which subgroup (the heavier one or the lighter one). The problem is that you have to find a way to single out the ball that has a different weight by using the scale only three times. No formal education or special knowledge is required, but it does take some creative thinking. There are multiple answers, by the way. A. If you can do this within one hour, you are extremely smart, maybe one in a million. B. If you can do this within one day, you are still pretty smart. C. If you did it in less than 10 minutes, then you are just lucky or you have done a similar problem before. ;)[
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I've never seen a problem like this before, and it took me just over 3 minutes to solve it. Does that mean I'm one in a thousand-kagillion? :P You can also do the same with 18 or 27 balls and 3 uses of the scales. or if you were allowed 4 uses of the scales, you could have 54 or 81 balls. Was fun though! thanks!
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I've never seen a problem like this before, and it took me just over 3 minutes to solve it. Does that mean I'm one in a thousand-kagillion? :P You can also do the same with 18 or 27 balls and 3 uses of the scales. or if you were allowed 4 uses of the scales, you could have 54 or 81 balls. Was fun though! thanks!
pmartin wrote: I've never seen a problem like this before, and it took me just over 3 minutes to solve it. Does that mean I'm one in a thousand-kagillion? The answer is available on the web, but if you did get the answer by youself, I strongly recommend that you post the answer in a new thread in the lounge, I am sure some people will be interested in this. I will nominate you as "The Problem Solver on CP", Chris will probably write a script to automatically find all homework problems in various discussion forums and forward them to your mailbox. :-D[
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pmartin wrote: I've never seen a problem like this before, and it took me just over 3 minutes to solve it. Does that mean I'm one in a thousand-kagillion? The answer is available on the web, but if you did get the answer by youself, I strongly recommend that you post the answer in a new thread in the lounge, I am sure some people will be interested in this. I will nominate you as "The Problem Solver on CP", Chris will probably write a script to automatically find all homework problems in various discussion forums and forward them to your mailbox. :-D[
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Xiangyang Liu wrote: I will nominate you as "The Problem Solver on CP", Chris will probably write a script to automatically find all homework problems in various discussion forums and forward them to your mailbox. Hehehe. Do I get a medal, or a framed letter? I hope so! I'll even fly down to sydney to pick it up Chris, if you are listening! :P But yeah, I hadn't seen it before, and no, I didn't look for it on the web. So hooray for me. All your homework are belong to us! - Phil
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Xiangyang Liu wrote: I will nominate you as "The Problem Solver on CP", Chris will probably write a script to automatically find all homework problems in various discussion forums and forward them to your mailbox. Hehehe. Do I get a medal, or a framed letter? I hope so! I'll even fly down to sydney to pick it up Chris, if you are listening! :P But yeah, I hadn't seen it before, and no, I didn't look for it on the web. So hooray for me. All your homework are belong to us! - Phil
pmartin wrote: But yeah, I hadn't seen it before, and no, I didn't look for it on the web. So hooray for me. BTW, I would like to see your answer. Not that I don't trust you, but there is a slight chance your solution is incorrect. I do it myself all the time, I mean providing wrong answers to other people. :-D[
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