You are confined in a room and given two metal rods. Out of these two rods, one is magnet and the other is the iron rod. They look starkly similar. You don't have any other metal object in the room.
One day, I thought of ways that can be used for creating a palindrome. So I decided that I will turn into a larger number by adding the reversed digits to the original number and keep doing it till I finally obtained a palindrome.
I am not sure if this process will always result in a palindrome eventually but I was able to produce a four-digit palindrome. Can you guess my starting number?
John: "Hi Teacher, What is your favourite movie ?".
Chemistry Teacher: "Indium Cerium Platinum Iodine Oxygen Nitrogen".
Ten seconds later... John replied I got it.
* Lets say y = x
* Multiply through by x xy = x2
* Subtract y2 from each side xy - y2 = x2 - y2
* Factor each side y(x-y) = (x+y)(x-y)
* Divide both sides by (x-y) y = x+y
* Divide both sides by y y/y = x/y + y/y
* And so... 1 = x/y + 1
* Since x=y, x/y = 1 1 = 1 + 1
* And so... 1 = 2
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.
