James ordered a fishing rod, priced at $3.56. Unfortunately, James is an Eskimo who lives in a very remote part of Greenland and the import rules there forbid any package longer than 4 feet to be imported. The fishing rod was 4 feet and 1 inch, just a little too long, so how can the fishing rod be mailed to James without breaking the rules? Ideally James would like the fishing rod to arrive in one piece!
Insert the fishing rod into a box which measures 4 feet on all sides, the fishing rod will fit within the diagonal of the box with room to spare.
Last week, the local Primary school was visited by the Government School Inspector who was there to check that teachers were performing well in their respective classes. He was very impressed with one particular teacher. The Inspector noticed that each time the class teacher asked a question, every child in the class put up their hands enthusiastically to answer it. More surprisingly, whilst the teacher chose a different child to answer the questions each time, the answers were always correct.
Why would this be?
The children were instructed to ALL raise their hands whenever a question was asked. It did not matter whether they knew the answer or not. If they did not know the answer, however, they would raise their LEFT hand. If they knew the answer, they would raise their RIGHT hand. The class teacher would choose a different child each time, but always the ones who had their RIGHT hand raised.
There is a low railroad bridge in your town. One day you see a large truck stopped just before the underpass. When you ask what has happened, the driver tells you that his truck is half of inch higher than the indicated height of the opening. This is the only road to his destination. What can he do to get through the underpass the easiest way?
Let enough air out of the tires to lower the truck.
A man has two ropes of varying thickness (Those two ropes are not identical, they aren’t the same density nor the same length nor the same width). Each rope burns in 60 minutes. He actually wants to measure 45 mins. How can he measure 45 mins using only these two ropes.
He can’t cut the one rope in half because the ropes are non-homogeneous and he can’t be sure how long it will burn.
He will burn one of the rope at both the ends and the second rope at one end. After half an hour, the first one burns completely and at this point of time, he will burn the other end of the second rope so now it will take 15 mins more to completely burn. so total time is 30+15 i.e. 45mins.