A delivery truck from the post office is sent to the airport to meet a cargo plane at its planned arrival time. The plane lands ahead of schedule and its contents are brought toward the post office by bicycle. After a half hour, the bicycle meets the truck and the mail is transferred.
The truck returns from the post office 20 minutes early. How early did the plane arrive? (Assume all transactions are instantaneous)
The delivery truck arrived back 20 minutes early, so it would have taken 20 minutes to go from where it met the bicycle to get to the airport and back. Therefore, the bicycle and truck met when the truck was 10 minutes from the airport. Adding those 10 minutes to the 30 minutes the truck had already driven to meet the bicycle means the plane arrived 40 minutes ahead of schedule.
On the sixth of May in the year 1978 at exactly thirty-four minutes past noon, a most extraordinary event occurred. This singular occasion will probably never be witnessed by anyone who was alive at that time. What happened?
The time and date was 12:34 5/6/78, counting from one to eight. The next time this event will occur is 12:34 6 May 2078. Unless someone alive in 1978 lives to be over a hundred, they won’t be alive when it happens again.
Brandon was walking around at the carnival. A man called out from a booth and said, “If I can write your exact weight on this piece of paper, you have to pay me $50. If I can’t do it, I’ll pay you $50.”
Brandon checked the booth for a scale but saw nothing. He agreed. Since your weight can fluctuate by a pound or two, he decided that no matter what number the man wrote, he would just say he weighed a pound more or less. In the end, the man in the booth won the $50. How did he do it?