Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Zen problem.?

A Buddhist monk got an errand from his teacher: to meditate for exactly 45 minutes. He has no watch; instead he is given two inscent sticks, and he is told that each of those sticks would completely burn in 1 hour. The sticks are not identical, and they burn with variant yet unknown rates (they are hand-made). So he has these two inscent and some matches: can he arrange for exactly 45 minutes of meditation?



Zen problem.?

If a stick does not burn at a constant rate, there is no way to use it as a measuring device for anything besides a 1-hour increment, assuming it is known the stick will be completely burnt in exactly 1 hour.



Zen problem.?

That is not the correct answer, burn at both ends of stick 1, and burn at one end of stick 2.



Which implies, stick 1 gets over in 1/2 hour. Now stick 2 can



burn for 1/2 hour more, now light the other side immediately,



it gets reduced to 1/4 hour.



Total time will be 3/4 hour. Report It



Zen problem.?

Good math question, but I don%26#039;t feel like figuring it out.



Zen problem.?

If it takes an hour to burn either candle, then 45 minutes would be 3/4 of the candle.

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