Today Puzzle #795
Puzzle No. 795鈥� Friday 31 July 2020
The character Harry Potter is 40 years old today! Harry's wife Ginny, and his friends Hermione and her husband Ron want to celebrate his birthday. They plan on sharing 4 pints of Butterbeer in a single jug. Unfortunately the bartender has lost all the jugs which have a capacity of 4 pints. Ginny has an empty jug with a 5 pint capacity and Ron has an empty jug with a 3 pint capacity. With only 10 pints of Butterbeer left at the tap, how does Hermione use the magic of maths to measure precisely 4 pints of Butterbeer?
Today’s #PuzzleForToday has been set by Bobby Seagull, school maths teacher, author and Cambridge University Doctorate student.
Click here for the answer
There are multiple ways of completing this puzzle and as such, this is only one method.
Let’s call the 5-pint jug, Jug A, and the 3-pint jug, Jug B.
1. Hermione pours 5 pints in Jug A from the tap.
2. She pours 3 pints from Jug A into Jug B. So Jug A has 2 pints in it.
3. She pours away the 3 pints in Jug B.
4. Then she pours the 2 pints from Jug A into the now empty Jug B.
5. She pours 5 pints into Jug A from the tap.
6. Finally she pours 1 pint from Jug A into Jug B. So Jug A has 4 pints in it.
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