A girl has stolen two bars of solid gold, each weighing 20 pounds, and is running from some police.?

Question

On the path she is on, she comes up to a rope bridge with a sign saying that the rope bridge can hold a maximum weight of 130 pounds, and that if any more weight is placed on the bridge it will collapse.

The girl knows her weight is 100 pounds, so she walks across the bridge carrying both gold bars, and the bridge does not break. How is this possible?

Answer 1

so does she carry them seperately or do they weigh a total of 20 pounds? you really need to tell the answer!!!

Answer 2

Hmm, not to play word games, but:

1. The girl may have lost some weight from all her running.
2. The gold bars may be measured in Troy ounces (different from regular ounces), thus making the 20-pound assessment inaccurate.
3. The bridge's designer may have been a little conservative in saying the bridge can only support 130 pounds (that's a pretty flimsy bridge, you have to admit).
4. But I bet the answer your teacher wants to hear is that the girl repeatedly tossed one bar or the other into the air, sort of juggling them, so that the bridge never supported more than 120 pounds. This completely ignores the fact that putting an additional 20+ pounds of force (force meaning mass plus acceleration) needed to toss up a bar would actually put _more_ weight than a mere 140 pounds onto the bridge. But that's more of an engineering concern. I guess.

Answer 3

Gold is weighed using the Troy system, where there are only 12 ounces to a pound. The maximum weight specified on the bridge will be using the normal imperial system for measuring weight, where there are 16 pounds to an ounce. Because of this 40 pounds of gold (weighed using the Troy system), will only weight 30 standard imperial pounds. This means that her total weight, including both gold bars, is 130 pounds, the exact capacity of the bridge. OR... The girl would simply throw one of the gold bars up in the air while holding the other in a juggling manner. Thus, she would never be holding more than 120 pounds as long as she threw the opposite bar up before she caught the other. hehehe

Answer 4

Funny. Being a gold person my self Gold is not measured in pounds so th weight would be different i think around 15 pounds using the Troy system of weight therefore the girl holding the 2 bars would be excatly the same weight as the bridge holds.

But this cant be so she could'vesimply throw one of the gold bars up in the air while holding the other so she juggled them

Answer 5

The bridge can hold more than 130 pounds, the sign just says it can't in order to avoid lawsuits. If the bridge would of broke the thief could of sued the city for the faulty sign and the way the system is now of days the odds are she would of won....

Answer 6

This question is traditionally answered by proposing that the girl juggles the gold bars, thus, at any one time she is only 'holding' a single bar. This answer is not correct, however, as when she tosses a bar of gold upwards there is an equal and opposite force downwards, by throwing the bar up she pushes down on the bridge harder. There is no escape.

Answer 7

her total weight with the 2 gold bars is 100 pounds. You do not add them afterwards to the 100 pounds as you would obtain an answer of 140.

Answer 8

The weight needs to be evenly distributed on the entire bridge for that warning to hold

Answer 9

she chops of one of her arms before going...thereby losing 16 pounds and only having crossed weighing 124 pounds

Answer 10

it can have more capacity but fr saftey they ve put those signs
or she must have gone slowly
u can do that option to