Math Riddles

 

By David Pleacher

Question: Does a pound of gold or a pound of feathers weight more?


By David Pleacher

Question: Does an ounce of gold or an ounce of feathers weight more?

Question: You have two coconuts and you want to find out how high they can be dropped from a 100 story building before they break. But you only have $1.40 and the elevator costs a dime each time you ride it up (it's free for rides down).

How can you drop the coconuts to guarantee you will find the lowest floor they will break at, while starting and ending at floor 1?

Note: They break when dropped from the same height and they don't weaken from getting dropped.

Question: The warden of a circular jail is extremely hyper one day so he begins running around opening cells. The jail has 100 cells numbered from 1 to 100. He runs in a circle and opens all of the cells. Next he runs around and closes every 2nd cell (starting with cell 2, 4, 6 , etc.). If a cell is open he closes it and if a cell is closed he opens it. When he finishes running by all 100 cells he opens/closes every 3rd cell (starting with 3, 6, 9, 12 etc.), then every 4th cell (starting with 4, 8, 12, etc.) and so on. He does this until he goes around and only changes the 100th cell.

When he is done what cells will be open?

Question: Two boys, Trevor and Tyler, are running a 100 meter race. The first time they race Trevor beats Tyler by 5 meters. To make things fair, the next time they race Trevor stands 5 meters behind the starting line.

Who wins the second race (assuming they run the same speed as the first race)?