You are given two medium sized pomegranates. You’re also given a 36 storey building. Now keep these simple facts in mind: (1) A pomegranate that does not break on falling can be reused; (2) A broken pomegranate has to be discarded immediately; (3) Both pomegranates experience the same effect of a fall as both are identical; (4) If a pomegranate breaks on falling from the first floor, it will definitely break from all the floors above the first floor; (5) If a pomegranate does not break from falling from the thirty sixth floor, it will not break from all the floor below it as well.
All you have to do is find out the minimum drops with which you can determine the floor from which it’s safe to drop pomegranates.
THROUGHPUT
(The piping hot leftover was: “Aeroplanes don’t fly because of the Bernoulli Principle. (Otherwise how would they fly inverted?) So what keeps them airborne then?)
For an aeroplane to move through the air, four forces are required -- one is the weight of the plane which acts downwards, to compensate for this we have a vertically upward force called lift. Next, we have a backward force called drag which is compensated by the forward propelling force thrust. In order to fly, aeroplanes use Bernoulli’s Principle as well as Newton’s Third Law of Motion. The former is used to enable the plane to leave the runway whereas the latter is used once the plane enters cruising mode. -- Shashi Shekher Thakur, shashishekher@yahoo.com
The design of the wings must enable them to force the air downward. So, if it can be managed in inverted position by keeping the nose up and giving the wings sufficient angle to deflect the air downwards, the aircraft can fly upside down. -- Abhay Prakash, abhayprakash@hotmail.com
(The second problem was about pairs of words where one clue defines one word; the other defines the word that is formed when the initial letter of the first word is removed.)
Being a 15-year-old, I never had the guts to solve and submit any of the problems that appeared (also, I was no match for most of them!). This is my first attempt and I couldn’t be happier to give you the answers. (1) SUFFER/PRISON: J-AIL; (2) ASSENTED/AVARICE: A-GREED; (3) IN GOOD TIME/ALMOST: N-EARLY; (4) MOVEMENT/FEELING: E-MOTION; (5) AFT/SEVERE: A-STERN; (6) MORE CERTAIN/MONEY-LENDER: U-SURER; (7) WITHOUT DIFFICULTY/SUGGEST: S-IMPLY; (8) DIFFICULTIES/FOREIGN EXCHANGE: T-ROUBLE; (9) ODD/ALIENATE: E-STRANGE; (10) TIDY/DINE: N-EAT. I’m not sure how many people have already sent you the answers, but in the (completely awesome) event that you do publish me, please withhold my email ID. -- Marianne Joseph, (ID withheld)
The first letters preceding the hyphens together form JANE AUSTEN, an English writer whose novels include Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. -- Sheikh Sintha Mathar, sheikhsm7@gmail.com
(Among the first 10 who also got it right are: Saishankar Swaminathan, saishankar482@gmail.co; V V Murthy, varahamurthy1954@gmail.com; Soman Manjore, hsoman@gmail.com; Abinash Padhi, abinash.padhi7@gmail.com; Dr P Gnanaseharan, gnanam.chithrabanu@gmail.com; Gatha Durgadas, gathadurgadas@gmail.com; Ramakrishna Bhogadi, rambhogadi@gmail.com; Ravi Nidugondi, ravi.nidugondi@gmail.com; A V Ramana Rao, raoavr@gmail.com; Neethi Balagopal, neethibala@gmail.com)
(The third one was: You have to run two laps around a track. The first lap, you run at any speed but for the second lap, you have to run faster, so that the average of both speeds is equal to two times the first speed. How can this be done?)
Speed is distance/time. If the first lap takes x minutes, to get an average of twice the speed, the second lap also must be done in x minutes as the distance covered is twice that of the first lap. Which means that the second lap must be done in zero time. The only way to do it is to run at infinite speed. Catch me if you can! -- Dr Ramakrishna Easwaran, drrke12@gmail.com
BUT GOOGLE THIS NOW
1. Solve the number series by identifying the last number. 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, ?
2. Tony has some great stories about his grandfather who fought in World War I. He says that the man was so brave that he was awarded a medal with the words “For our Courageous Soldiers In World War I” embedded. Bill knows that his friend is lying. How?
Mukul Sharma
Sharma is a scriptwriter and former editor of Science Today magazine.(mukul.mindsport@gmail.com)