Two friends were stuck in a cottage. They had nothing to do and thus they started playing cards. Suddenly the power went off and Friend 1 inverted the position of 15 cards in the normal deck of 52 cards and shuffled it. Now he asked Friend 2 to divide the cards into two piles (need not be equal) with equal number of cards facing up. The room was quite dark and Friend 2 could not see the cards. He thinks for a while and then divides the cards in two piles.
On checking, the count of cards facing up is same in both the piles. How could Friend 2 have done it ?
While preparing the table for dinner, wife came up with an idea to tease his mathematician husband. She asked her husband to pick nine toothpicks and make ten without breaking any toothpick.
The husband was also smart and did it within seconds. How ?
How can you throw a ball as hard as you can and have it come back to you even if it doesn't hit anything there is nothing attached to it and no one else catches or throws it.
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.