Two guards were on duty outside a barracks. One faced up the road to watch for anyone approaching from the North. The other looked down the road to see if anyone approached from the South. Suddenly one of them said to the other, "Why are you smiling?"
A high school has a strange principal. On the first day, he has his students perform an odd opening day ceremony:
There are one thousand lockers and one thousand students in the school. The principal asks the first student to go to every locker and open it. Then he has the second student go to every second locker and close it. The third goes to every third locker and, if it is closed, he opens it, and if it is open, he closes it. The fourth student does this to every fourth locker, and so on. After the process is completed with the thousandth student, how many lockers are open?
John Went to the nearby store in a Mall to buy something for her home. Below is the conversation between the two:
John: How much for the one?
Shopkeeper: It is $2
John: How much for the Eleven?
Shopkeeper: It is $4
John: How much for the Hundred?
Shopkeeper: It is $6.
Accidentally, two trains are running in the opposite direction and enter a tunnel that is 200 miles long. A supersonic bird that has fled the lab and taken shelter in the tunnel starts flying from one train towards the other at a speed of 1000 mph. As soon as it reaches the second train, he starts flying back to avoid collision and meets the first train again at the other end. The bird keeps flying to and fro till the trains collide with each other.
What is the total distance that the supersonic bird has traveled till the trains collided?
A research team went to a village somewhere between the jungles of Africa. Luckily for them, they reached the day when quite an interesting custom was to be performed. The custom was performed once a year as they confirmed and was performed in order to collect the taxes from every male of the region.
The taxes were to be paid in the form of grains. Everyone must pay pounds of grain equaling his respective age. This means a 20-year-old will have to pay 20 pounds of grain and a 30-year-old will pay 30 pounds of grain and so on.
The chief who collects the tax has 7 weights and a large 2-pan scale to weigh. But there is another custom that the chief can weigh only three of the seven weights.
Can you find out the weights of the seven weights? Also, what is the maximum age of the man that can be weighed for the payment of taxes?
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.