Four Gallons From Two Buckets

You have two buckets. One holds exactly five gallons and the other three gallons. How can you measure exactly four gallons of water into the five gallon bucket?

Assume you have an unlimited supply of water and that there are no measurement markings of any kind on the buckets.

  1. Fill the 3-gallon bucket.
  2. Pour the 3 gallons of water into the 5-gallon bucket
  3. Fill the 3-gallon bucket again.
  4. Fill up the 5-gallon bucket with the 3-gallon bucket, leaving you with 1 gallon left in the 3-gallon bucket.
  5. Empty out the 5-gallon bucket.
  6. Pour the remaining 1 gallon of water from the 3-gallon bucket into the 5-gallon bucket.
  7. Fill the 3-gallon bucket.
  8. Pour the 3 gallons of water from the 3-gallon bucket into the 5-gallon bucket leaving you with 4 gallons of water in the 5-gallon bucket.

Alternate solution:

  1. Fill up the 5 gallon bucket
  2. Pour it into 3 gallon bucket, leaving 2 gallons
  3. Empty out the 3 gallon bucket
  4. Pour the 2 gallons in the 5 gallon bucket into the 3 gallon bucket
  5. Fill up the 5 gallon bucket and pour it into the 3 gallon bucket until it’s full, leaving 4 gallons in the 5 gallon bucket.
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If you know of another word that looks like the object it represents, add it in the comments.

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IDEALS _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

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