John is on an island and there are three crates of fruit that have washed up in front of him. One crate contains only apples. One crate contains only oranges. The other crate contains both apples and oranges.
Each crate is labelled. One reads 'apples', one reads 'oranges', and one reads 'apples and oranges'. He know that NONE of the crates have been labeled correctly - they are all wrong.
If he can only take out and look at just one of the pieces of fruit from just one of the crates, how can he label all of the crates correctly?
You have two bottles of pills marked with labels A and B. The pills are identical. The doctor has asked you to take one A pill and one B pill daily. You cant take more or less than that.
While taking out the pills one day, you took out one pill from A and by mistake took out two from B. You have no idea which pill is which now.
You cant throw away the expensive pills. What will you do now?
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.
