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One day three Greek philosophers settled under the shade of an olive
tree, opened a bottle of Retsina, and began a lengthy discussion of the
Fundamental Ontological Question: Why does anything exist?
After a while, they began to ramble. Then, one by one, they fell asleep.
While the men slept, three owls, one above each philosopher,
completed their digestive process, dropped a present on each
philosopher's forehead, the flew off with a noisy "hoot." Perhaps the hoot awakened the philosophers.
As soon as they
looked at each other, all three began, simultaneously, to laugh.
Then,
one of them abruptly stopped laughing. Why?
Interesting reason behind it!
Source
What's the story behind?
The one who stopped laughing was the smartest one among! Read how he was the smartest.
We need to think from the smartest Philosopher's point of view. Let's name 2 other Philosophers as A & B.
Now here is what the smartest Philosopher would think.
"If I had nothing on my head then A & B must have been laughing after looking each other's head. And at least one of them is smart enough to realize that the other is laughing only after looking at him. That means A (or B) would have realized that the some thing is on his head too as B (or A) is laughing after looking him (not me if I had nothing on my head). Hence one of them would have stopped laughing. Since they are not stopping to laugh, I too must have something on my head."
Hence the smartest Philosopher stopped laughing after realizing that the fact.
A brilliant puzzle based on the similar logic is here!
A 120 wire cable has been laid firmly underground between two telephone exchanges located 10km apart.Unfortunately after the cable was laid it was discovered to
be the wrong type, the problem is the individual wires are not labeled.
There is no visual way of knowing which wire is which and thus
connections at either end is not immediately possible.
You are a trainee technician and your boss has
asked you to identify and label the wires at both ends without ripping
it all up. You have no transport and only a battery and light bulb to
test continuity. You do have tape and pen for labeling the wires.
What is the shortest distance in kilometers you will need to walk to correctly identify and label each wire?
Know here the efficient way!
Source
What was the task to test the skill?
The shortest distance is 20 km! Surprised? Read further.
Let's name the two exchanges as a 1 & 2 respectively. Now at end 1, let's make a groups of wires having 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 number of wires. Now somebody might ask why not 15 groups having 8 wires in each. After reading the entire process here, we'll get the answer of it.So we 15 groups have total 1 + 2 + 3....+ 15 = 120 wires. Let's name these groups as A, B, C, D ...... O. That means group A has 1, B has 2, C has 3 wires & so on.
Now join together all the wires of the particular group. For example, 2 wires of group B should be joined together, 7 wires of G tied together & so on. The sole wire of A is left as it is.
We will take the battery & bulb to other end traveling 10 km. We will say a wire is paired with the other if the bulb gets illuminated if battery & bulb connected in between.
Now let's take any wire at the other end & find the number of wires that are pairing with that particular wire under test. We will group such wires & label with those exactly how we labeled at end 1.
For example, if we find 2 wires pairing with particular wire then that wire & 2 paired wires together to be grouped in 3 wires & labeled as C.The sole wire not getting paired with any will be labeled as A. And group with wire pairing with 7 other wires together should be labeled as H.
In this way, we will have the exact group structure that we have at end 1. By now, we have identified & labeled correctly wires in groups of 1,2,3,....15 wires at both ends.
Now, we are going to label each wire of group by it's group & count number. For example, the only wire in group A labeled as A1, 2 wires in B are labeled as B1,B2, wires in G are labeled as G1,G2,G3,G4,G5,G6,G7 and so on.
Now, at end 2 itself, what we are going to do is connecting first wire of each group to A1. Second wire of each group to be connected to B2, third of each to be connected to C3 and so on. (refer the diagram above, where labels of wires that are to be connected together are written in same color).
