Table of contents |
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Introduction |
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Bag of Coins |
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Identifying the Bag of Forgeries |
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Weighing the Coins |
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Conclusion |
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Ishita has 10 bags filled with coins, but one of them contains forgeries. She needs your help to identify the bag with forgeries with just one weighing.
Each bag contains 1000 coins, but one bag has forgeries that weigh 1.1 grams instead of 1 gram like the genuine coins.
To identify the bag with forgeries, Ishita needs to follow a simple procedure. She should take out 1 coin from the 1st bag, 2 coins from the 2nd bag, 3 coins from the 3rd bag, and so on until she has 10 coins from the 10th bag. Then, she should weigh all these picked coins together.
The total weight of the coins should be (1+2+3+...+10) = 55 grams if there were no forgeries. However, if the total weight comes out to be 55.3 grams, then Ishita can conclude that the 3rd bag contains forgeries. Therefore, if the total weight is (55.n) grams, then the nth bag contains forgeries.
By following this simple weighing procedure, Ishita can identify the bag with forgeries and avoid being caught for not remembering which bag it was.