One day, John and his friends were playing around. Jacob hit something with a Pin and it popped. John's dad came into the room that very moment, but he wasn't mad. In fact, he was smiling. What did Jacob hit?
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.
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.
