Quandaries and Queries
 


Name: Shelly

Who is asking: Teacher
Level: All

Question:
You have three jugs: A 6 Liter, 4 Liter and a 3 Liter. Your goal is to get exactly 5 Liters of liquid in the 6 Liter jug. Your supply of liquid is unlimited and there are NO markings on the containers. You cannot do halves.



Hi Shelly,

Try to get 3 liters in the middle jug first, then pour 6 liters in the big jug and see how that helps.

Claude

I accidently wrote the first on wrong. I have already solved the one I sent you. Thanks for that help. What I meant to write is:

You have 3 jugs, one holding 6 L, 4 L, and 2 L. You want exactly 5 L of liquid in the 6 L. There are no markings on the containers and you cannot do halves (no guessing).

Shelly

For the first one you solved, try now to solve it economically, that is, without using more than five liters of water.

The second one cannot be solved in the standard way: If you can just measure water by filling jugs and pouring water from jug to jug until one fills up or the other one empties, then at all time the amount of water in a jug is always obtained by adding and subtracting even numbers, so the result is always an even number.

Claude


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