I drive at an average speed of 30 miles per hour to the railroad station each morning and catch my train. On a particular morning, there was a lot of traffic and at the halfway point, I had averaged only 15 miles per hour. How fast must I drive for the rest of the way to catch my train?
When Jack was six years old he hammered a nail into his favourite tree to mark his height. Ten years later at age sixteen, Jack returned to see how much higher the nail was. If the tree grew by five centimetres each year, how much higher would the nail be?
There are two beautiful yet remote islands in the South Pacific. The Islanders born on one island always tell the truth, and the Islanders from the other island always lie.
You are on one of the islands and meet three Islanders. You ask the first which island they are from in the most appropriate Polynesian tongue, and he indicates that the other two Islanders are from the same island. You ask the second Islander the same question, and he also indicates that the other two Islanders are from the same island.
Can you guess what the third Islander will answer to the same question?
An inspection by the superintendent of St. Joseph School was scheduled on the next day. The class teacher Jenifer knew that he would be asking questions from her class and she would have to choose a pupil to answer. To offer a perfect impression over him, the teacher explained certain instructions to the students to maximise the chances of getting correct answer every time.
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.
