What is the word or phrase?

Birbal was jester, counsellor, and fool to the great Moghul emperor, Akbar.
The villagers loved to talk of Birbal's wisdom and cleverness,
and the emperor loved to try to outsmart him.
One day Akbar (emperor) drew a line across the floor.
"Birbal," he ordered, "you must make this line shorter, but you cannot erase any bit of it."
Everyone present thought the emperor had finally outsmarted Birbal.
It was clearly an impossible task.
Yet within moments the emperor and everyone else present had to agree that Birbal had made the line shorter without erasing any of it.
How could this be?

Find the next number in the series

12, 20, 40, 72, 116, 172 ?

My friends called me Iron59 because my parents are a chemist and a mathematician. What is my real name?

Assume there are approximately 5,000,000,000 (5 billion) people on Earth. What would you estimate to be the result, if you multiply together the number of fingers on every person's left hand? (For the purposes of this exercise, thumbs count as fingers, for five fingers per hand.) If you cannot estimate the number then try to guess how long the number would be.

I am eight letters long - "12345678"
My 1234 is an atmospheric condition.
My 34567 supports a plant.
My 4567 is too appropriate.
My 45 is a friendly thank-you.
My 678 is a man's name.

What word am I?

Identify the movie name through below Rebus containing Pi Mouse and coconut tree..

Decode this picture on T-Shirt and tell what it says ?

There are three light switches outside a room. One of the switches is connected to a light bulb inside the room.
Each of the three switches can be either 'ON' or 'OFF'.

You are allowed to set each switch the way you want it and then enter the room(note: you can enter the room only once)

Your task is to then determine which switch controls the bulb?

What has to be broken before you can use it?