A man died, leaving $10,000,000 for his widow, 5 sons and 4 daughters. Each daughter received an equal amount, each son received twice as much as a daughter, and the widow received three times as much as a son.
A chicken farmer has figured out that a hen and a half can lay an egg and a half in a day and a half. How many hens does the farmer need to produce one dozen eggs in six days?
A man has eighty-one cows ( numbered 1,2,3...81 as such). The beauty is that cow no. 1 gives 1ltr of milk, cow no. 2 gives 2ltrs of milk and so on. The man wants to equally distribute the cows among his nine sons so that each one of them gets the same quantity of milk.
James ordered a fishing rod, priced at $3.56. Unfortunately, James is an Eskimo who lives in a very remote part of Greenland and the import rules forbid any package longer than 4 feet to be imported. The fishing rod was 4 feet and 1 inch, just a little too long, so how can the fishing rod be mailed to James without breaking the rules? Ideally James would like the fishing rod to arrive in one piece!
In 2011, people playing Foldit, an online puzzle game about protein folding, resolved the structure of an enzyme that causes an Aids-like disease in monkeys. Researchers had been working on the problem for 13 years. The gamers solved it in three weeks.