Donald and Regan are married with four children, named Michael, Farley, Solomon and Larry. They just had a baby girl and are picking the name. It’s down to Olivia, Tiffany and Jasmine. Donald’s brother, a piano teacher, tells them only one of the names would be correct. Which name is it?
If a cork is placed into a glass of water, it will almost always drift to the side of the glass. There is one simple way, however, to get the cork to float in the center of the glass. What is it?
Water, the glass, and the cork are all that is required.
The reason that a cork drifts to the side of a glass is that it floats to the highest point. Since water “clings” to the glass, the highest point is around the edge of the water. To get the cork to float in the middle of the glass, all you have to do is fill the glass as much as possible. The water will form a convex shape above the glass, with the highest point at its center. This is where the cork will settle.
Fred brings home 100 pounds of potatoes, which (being purely mathematical potatoes) consist of 99 percent water. He then leaves them outside overnight so that they consist of 98 percent water. What is their new weight?
100 lb of potatoes with 99% water weight means there’s 99 lb of water and 1 lb of solids, a 1:99 ratio.
If the water decreases to 98%, then the solids account for 2% of the weight. The 2:98 ratio reduces to 1:49. Since the solids still weigh 1 lb, the water must weigh 49 lb for a total of 50 lbs for the answer.
A man is found dead at the end of an alley. A detective who enters the scene sees the letter X and immediately knows who killed the man and why. What did the detective conclude?
The alley is a bowling alley. The man who was killed was a pin spotter (an old profession where they would reset the pins by hand). The X was the marking on the score sheet for a strike. The detective saw the letter X and knew that the person bowled last, got a strike, and was due to bowl again. But they bowled before the pin spotter could get out of the way.