(The problem was: "A chicken farmer also has some cows for a total of 30 animals, and the animals have 74 legs in all. How many chickens does the farmer have?" - MS)
Published: Fri 1 May 2015, 1:26 PM
Last updated: Sun 26 Jul 2015, 3:37 PM
E4
You guys (and that obviously includes the girls too) are really something. Take, for instance, the chicken farmer and number of legs problem. I literally got four score and more answers, of which only a few have been run here and - get this - most of them were prefixed by "Oh this is a baby problem" or "It's just too easy" or "Any eighth grader can solve it", etc. The same goes for the cricket hat-trick puzzle sent in by a reader. Tons of emails came e-hailing on my head! I get it, I get it; these are such easy peasy problems that the huge hatchet in your heads can hammer out solutions in yoctoseconds (look it up) or less.
But when it comes to the ostensibly tough ones, the ones you look over the horizon so &you don't have to face them, I get almost zilch answers. For example consider this problem that was run recently: "A perfect sphere made entirely of chalk, rolls on a uniform flat surface at a constant speed. The chalk is transferred from the sphere to the surface at a uniform rate. If the sphere rolls in a straight line until there is nothing left of it to roll, approximately what shape will be seen on the flat surface?" So far, I've got two and a half solutions, of which one is wrong, one is sort of right, and the half - a bit of both. Anyone want to attempt it again or do we go back to pre-Montessori days again?
DEAR MS
(The problem was: "A chicken farmer also has some cows for a total of 30 animals, and the animals have 74 legs in all. How many chickens does the farmer have?" - MS)
Shake-A-Leg-Dept:
The farmer has 23 hens. As hens have two legs each, the total comes to 46 legs. He also has seven cows. As cows have four legs, the total comes to 28 legs. The question mentions that the farmer had 30 animals and a total of 74 legs. Animals: 23 + 7 = 30; legs: 46 + 28 = 74.
siddhpatkar@gmail.com
The farmer has 24 chickens (48 legs), 6 cows (24 legs) plus himself (2 legs), for a total of 74.
dhgaikwad@yahoo.com (This isn't really right, but can we fault it? - MS)
(Among others who got it right are: Adwait Kasar, adwait.kasar@gmail.com; Iqra Zafar, iqra1849@gmail.com; Salman Faariz, faarizsalman003@gmail.com; Athiyaman, athinalla@gmail.com; Yakub Lokhandwala, ylokhandwala@gmail.com; Sunitha Jaayashankar, sunithajayashankar@hotmail.com)
(The second problem was: "A bowler takes three wickets in three different overs but it's still a hat trick. How?" - MS)
Just-Not-Cricket-Dept:
Merv Hughes did this. He took a wicket in the last ball of one over. He took his second wicket (and the opposition's last wicket) on the first ball of his next over. He took the third wicket on the first ball of the next innings. Not only was this hat-trick spread over a span of three overs, but it was also over a span of two innings and two days.
rsvishal.iisc@gmail.com
(The third question was: "If you rapidly unroll cellotape in a dark room, you can see a brief glow along the line where the tape is being spun from the roll. Why?"- MS)
Dark-Glow-Dept:
The glow is due to static electricity. When two materials pressed together are quickly separated, there is a flow of electrons from one material to the other and this static electricity produces the spark.
orcontactme@gmail.com
This discovery has also caught the attention of some physicists who think one day it may lead to cheap, portable radiography machines.
saif_sfk@hotmail.com
ENDGAME(S)
1. A sundial has the fewest moving parts of any timepiece. Which has the most?
2. What is unusual about the following words: revive, banana, grammar, voodoo, assess, potato, dresser and uneven?
(To get in touch with Mukul, mail him at mukul.mindsport@gmail.com)
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