----- Original Message -----
From: <ken.landaiche@nokia.com>
To: <mikel@ichips.intel.com>; <shop-talk@autox.team.net>
Sent: Friday, January 26, 2001 9:51 PM
Subject: brain teaser.
>
> "You are a king with a balance scale. You have ten tax collectors, but
you
> suspect that one has been stealing 10 grams from every 100 grams of gold
> that he
> collects. How do you tell for certain which bag is short money with only
> one use
> of the scale? Things you should know: you can only place or take away
bags
> all
> at once (in other words, you can not put them all on and take them off one
> by one,
> or vice versa)."
>
> Any ideas?
> No-one else seems to have answered so here goes:
take one bag of gold from the first tax collector
2 bags from the second
3 from the third
etc
The total weight of gold should be 10 factorial, ie 55x100 grams
If the first collector has been pinching the goods, the total will be 10g
light
If the second it will be 20g light.
etc
So, he can identify the guilty party by seeing how inderweight the total is.
PaulW
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