You have three orange, two pink and five purple balls in the drawer beside your bed. There is no electricity and the room is entirely dark. How many balls must you take out to ensure at least one ball of each colour at least?
You were playing ping pong with your friend. Suddenly the ball fell into a narrow metal pipe that was imbedded in the concrete surface of the floor one foot deep. Now you don't have any other ball and you desperately want to take it out and play. You and your friend have your shoelaces, your tennis paddle and a plastic water bottle. However, the bottle cannot fit into the pipe.
A tree doubled in height each year until it reached its maximum height over the course of ten years. How many years did it take for the tree to reach half its maximum height?
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.
