A swan sits at the center of a perfectly circular lake. At an edge of the lake stands a ravenous monster waiting to devour the swan. The monster can not enter the water, but it will run around the circumference of the lake to try to catch the swan as soon as it reaches the shore. The monster moves at 4 times the speed of the swan, and it will always move in the direction along the shore that brings it closer to the swan the quickest. Both the swan and the the monster can change directions in an instant.
The swan knows that if it can reach the lake's shore without the monster right on top of it, it can instantly escape into the surrounding forest.
In front of you, there are 9 coins. They all look absolutely identical, but one of the coins is fake. However, you know that the fake coin is lighter than the rest, and in front of you is a balance scale. What is the least number of weightings you can use to find the counterfeit coin?
A research team went to a village somewhere between the jungles of Africa. Luckily for them, they reached the day when quite an interesting custom was to be performed. The custom was performed once a year as they confirmed and was performed in order to collect the taxes from every male of the region.
The taxes were to be paid in the form of grains. Everyone must pay pounds of grain equaling his respective age. This means a 20-year-old will have to pay 20 pounds of grain and a 30-year-old will pay 30 pounds of grain and so on.
The chief who collects the tax has 7 weights and a large 2-pan scale to weigh. But there is another custom that the chief can weigh only three of the seven weights.
Can you find out the weights of the seven weights? Also, what is the maximum age of the man that can be weighed for the payment of taxes?
There once were seven dwarfs who were all brothers. They were all born two years apart. The youngest dwarf is seven years old. How old is his oldest brother?
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.
