Tuesday 26 August, 2008
A real Puzzle
There is a desert of 1000km stretch. The two endpoints are A and B. A camel is standing at A and there are 3000 bananas. The camel can carry a maximum of 1000 bananas on his back. The camel eats 1 banana for travelling 1km. Now the problem is to find the maximum no. of bananas the camel can carry from to B.
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4 comments:
Assuming all 3000 bananas are kept at point A, the camel can transport only 2 bananas till point B.
It carries 1000 for the first journey. If it consumes 1 banana after every Km, it will have consumed 999 after 999 kms. After the precise 1 Km, 1 banana will have reached B (and then it will be promptly chomped down by the camel).
Then, it will walk back to point A and then gobble down 1000 (to compensate for the 1000 Km it walked at a stretch). Then it will again hobble down to B, repeating the procedure and transporting ONE more banana.
There might be a variation in the answer. if it eats the bananas at one go AFTER all the hard work, it might decide to save up the 1000 and chomp them once it has reached B. That will mean that it transports 2000.
However, it might decide to eat first and eat 1000 before it sets out to B. That way, only 1000 will get transported.
The maximum, in any case, seems to be 2000.
Is it 500 ?
yes
but how??
see... the camel picks up 1000 bananas. Till he reaches the 250km mark, he would have eaten 250. He has 750 remaining. He leaves 500 bananas at the 250 km mark. Then he turns back till starting position and again picks up 1000bananas and does the same thing. After all the bananas hav been shifted, the camel again does the same thing till the 500km mark. So, we have 1000 bananas till the 500km mark. Now the camel walks straight to the end point with 500 bananas left! :)
How much points do i get?
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