this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2023
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Math Riddles

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  1. Riddles, not homework. This community is for people to share math problems that they think others would enjoy solving. It is not intended for helping students with homework problems or explaining mathematical concepts. Posting riddles which you do not know the answer to is permitted.

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Calculating 25 minutes by burning 2 inconsistently burning 1-hour ropes

You are given two ropes and are told that they burn at inconsistent rates, but will always take 1 hour to completely burn up. This means that cutting one of the ropes perfectly in half will not give you two smaller 30-minute ropes.

You are told that you need to approximately calculate 25 minutes by burning these ropes in some fashion.

How do you accomplish this?


Hint:

first ½ of hintI carefully chose approximately instead of precisely
second ½ of hintbecause to calculate it precisely would require that you ignite an infinite number of flames

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I feel like I've entered a Google interview