How can a man go eight days without sleep?

Can you solve this amazing hard number series problem?
7, 8, 10, 12, 16, 18 ?

A mother is 21 years older than her child. In exactly 6 years from now, the mother will be exactly 5 times as old as the child.
Where's the father?

One is to three as three is to five and five is to four and four is the magic number.
What is the pattern?

I want to fill my bucket using both cold and hot water.
I have two taps for both cold and hot water. The hot water tap fills the bucket in exact 6 hours and the cold water tap fills the bucket in exact 4 hours.
I turn both of them simultaneously but I forgot to turn off another tap which removes the water out of the bucket. This tap can empty the bucket in 12 hours.

How Long will it take to fill the bucket?

John is on an island and there are three crates of fruit that have washed up in front of him. One crate contains only apples. One crate contains only oranges. The other crate contains both apples and oranges.

Each crate is labelled. One reads 'apples', one reads 'oranges', and one reads 'apples and oranges'. He know that NONE of the crates have been labeled correctly - they are all wrong.

If he can only take out and look at just one of the pieces of fruit from just one of the crates, how can he label all of the crates correctly?

I am the largest in my family of fifty.
The youngest of our family lives separately from the rest of the family and so do I.
I am regarded as harsh and tough.
I am so large, you cut me in two equal halves,
each half would still be larger than the second largest member of the family.
Who am I?

The more of this there is, the less you see. What is it?

Which letter of the alphabet has the most water?

who is silent in the parliament?