There is a woman and she has recently stolen 3 bars of gold from an aztec temple, shes running through the jungle and the aztecians arent too pleased, so they are in hot pursuit,Such hot pursuit in fact that she has shed her clothes to make more haste. (so she is naked and carrying nothing but 3 gold bars) She comes to a rope bridge which is 500m long. The rope bridge can only take a maximum weight of 70kg. She weighs 68kg and each gold bar weighs 1kg. She gets across in one journey with all three gold bars,and then cuts the rope bridge (she cuts the rope bridge with a machete which happens to be conveniently lying on the other side of the chasm) so the shady aztecians (whom i might add have a particular fondness of eating humans, fall into the 3 mile deep chasm below, to their peril? who knows thats a different story. But to sum up. Rope bridge,500m max load 70kg, she weighs 68kg and has only the 3 gold bars weighing 1kg each, makes 1 journey,because of pursuing tribe. How? - Dan.
2006-09-10 12:18:00 · 6 answers · asked by originalnuttah2005 1 in Entertainment & Music ➔ Jokes & Riddles
juggles them :)
2006-09-10 12:23:27 · answer #1 · answered by iamigloo 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
A long-winded puzzle deserves and equally long-winded answer, right?
The traditional answer to this riddle is that the woman juggles the bars, leaving no more than two in her hands at any time, thus staying under the 70kg weight limit.
The riddle fails to take some physics into account. In order to juggle the bars, she must stop their motion and propel them back into the air. Even if she only juggles the bars 20cm over her hands (pretty fast; she'd have less than half a second to catch and throw each bar), she would have to exert an amount of upward force over four times greater than the amount of force exerted by gravity on the bar. Due to Newton's Laws of Motion, the amount of force exerted upwards is the same as the amount exerted downwards, meaning that the bars of gold will exert MUCH MORE force on the bridge if she's juggling them than they would if she were simply carrying them.
This might seem counterintuitive, but think of it this way: if our damsel in distress attempted to walk across the bridge sans gold bars, she'd be fine, having an extra two kilograms of weight tolerance to spare. However if she jumped up and down on the bridge, it would break, because the bridge has to exert more upward force to stop her when she falls AND to stay in place when she launches. The difference in force would be greater than the two kilogram leeway, and the bridge would break. By juggling, it's as if the gold bars were jumping up and down on the bridge. Same result for the brave but regretfully uninformed lady.
Assuming that the rope bridge has wooden planks, she could remove one or two and throw them in the chasm, leaving enough to step over the gaps, then go back to grab her gold and hustle across. By doing so, she compensates for the weight of the gold by reducing the amount of weight that the bridge is holding up to begin with.
If the bridge is all rope, or she doesn't have time for bridge deconstruction, our gal had better part with one of those gold bars before making the trip.
2006-09-10 21:42:50 · answer #2 · answered by marbledog 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Whew! The above answer is awesome! LOL.
2006-09-10 23:08:03 · answer #3 · answered by jfmm 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
when she weighed herself she had her clothes on which weighed 1 or 2kg.
2006-09-10 19:24:42 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
iamigloo is smart
2006-09-10 19:32:11 · answer #5 · answered by chrystallec 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
um...
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i don't know, but that one is really good.
2006-09-10 19:27:13 · answer #6 · answered by Mimi C 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋