You have two strings whose only known property is that when you light one end of either string it takes exactly one hour to burn. The rate at which the strings will burn is completely random and each string is different.
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 ?
A mathematics teacher took exams for his students. Out of the total students, 25% passed both the tests included in the exam. However, only 42% were able to clear the first test.
Can you find out the percentage of those students who passed the first test and also passed the second test?
In case you were starting to feel confident, this one was meant for third graders in Vietnam. The answer is 66, but we don't blame you for scratching your head about how they got there.
There are hundred red gems and hundred blue gems. The blue gems are priceless while the red gems equal wastage. You have two sacks one labeled Heads and the other Tails. You have to distribute the gems as you want in the two sacks. Then a coin will be flipped and you will be asked to pick up a gem randomly from the corresponding sacks.
How will you distribute the gems between the sacks so that the odds of picking a Blue gem are maximum?
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.