[CrackMonkey] [schoen@loyalty.org: Pill-weighing]

[Bernard]

13Feb2000 11:07AM (-0800) From [schoen at loyalty.org] schoen [Seth David Schoen]
> Based on Gardner's _aha! Insight_, if I remember correctly.  I've sent
> Lise back to the grad students with the following counter-challenges:
> 
> ----- Forwarded message from Seth David Schoen <schoen at loyalty.org> -----
> 
> [...]
> 
> You are a pharmacist, and [...]
> 
> (1) You have n bottles of pills.  Each bottle contains an unknown number of
> pills.  The pills are supposed to be 100 mg, but one bottle is "bad": all
> the pills in that bottle are 101 mg instead.
> 
> By using a scale only once, how can you immediately tell which bottle is bad?

Pour all the pills into one bottle.  It now contains the bad pill.

	Bernard

Bernard P. Murray, PhD
nutella at zork.net (Department of Desserts and Toppings, San Francisco, USA)