In a science lab, a petri dish hosts a healthy colony of yeast for an experiment. Now every minute, all the yeast cells divide into two. At noon, there was just a single cell of yeast and at 1:22, the Petri dish was half full. Can you calculate when the dish will be full of yeast?
There is a box in which distinct numbered balls have been kept. You have to pick two balls randomly from the lot.
If someone is offering you a 2 to 1 odds that the numbers will be relatively prime, for example
If the balls you picked had the numbers 6 and 13, you lose $1.
If the balls you picked had the numbers 5 and 25, you win $2.
You know three triplets: Frank John and Wayne (need to return your money). Frank always tells the truth while John and Wayne always lie. You meet one of them on the road and can ask him a three-word question.
Which question, will you ask?
If I put in one canary per cage, I have one bird too many. If I put in two canaries per cage, I have one cage too many. How many cages and canaries do I have?
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.
