I am the black child of a white father, a wingless bird, flying even to the clouds of heaven. I give birth to tears of mourning in pupils that meet me, even though there is no cause for grief, and at once on my birth, I am dissolved into air. What am I?
Its something that each of us devours,
Not just us but birds, beats, trees, and flowers,
Frets iron and nibbles steel,
Toil hard stones to meal,
Exterminates king, collapse town,
And blows the mountains down.
If you were to put a coin into an empty bottle and then insert a cork into the neck, how could you remove the coin without taking out the cork or breaking the bottle?
15 caves are arranged in a circle at the temple of doom. One of these caves has the treasure of gems and wealth. Each day the treasure keepers can move the treasure to an adjacent cave or can keep it in the same cave. Every day two treasure seekers visit the place and have enough time to enter any two caves of their choice.
How do the treasure seekers ensure that they find the treasure in the minimum number of possible days?
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.