Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Puzzle - 25


You have been given a bucket that can hold water of three litre and five litre. If you are asked to measure 4 liters of water out by using only these two buckets, How will you do it?


Answer 1:
Fill the 3-liter bottle and pour it into the empty 5-liter bottle.
Fill the 3-liter bottle again, and pour enough to fill 5-liter bottle. This leaves exactly 1 liter in the 3-liter bottle.
Empty the 5-liter bottle; pour the remaining 1 liter from the 3-liter bottle into the 5-liter bottle.
Fill the 3-liter bottle and pour it into the 5-liter bottle. The 5-liter bottle now has exactly 4 liters.

Answer 2:
Fill the 5-liter bottle and pour water from it into the 3-liter bottle until it is full.
This leaves 2 liters in the 5-liter bottle.
Empty the 3-liter bottle and pour the 2 liters of water from the 5-liter bottle into the 3-liter bottle.
Fill the 5-liter bottle again.
Fill the 3-liter bottle from the 5-liter bottle. Since the 3-liter bottle had 2 liters of water, only one liter is transferred leaving exactly 4 liters of water in the 5-liter jug.

8 comments:

Priya said...

Check if this is correct.

1. Pour 3 litres of water.
2. Take the 5 litre bucket with
half of it filled. (2.5 litres)

Now the total is 5.5 litres.

3. Remove water with the 3 litre
bucket with half of it folled.

5.5 - 1.5 = 4.0 litres

Saravanan said...

Hmm, this idea seems fine, but how will you make sure that the bucket is having exactly half bucket water filled? it will not be acurate right? there are two other ways to do it...

Anonymous said...

Take 5lit full water in bucket and pour it in 3lit bucket. Now 2lit remains in 5lit bucket.
Empty the 3lit bucket and pour the 2lit in it. Now again take 5 lit bucket full and pour 1lit in 3lit bucket. 4lit remains in 5lit bucket.

Anonymous said...

Fill the 5 litre bucket with water. Pour it into the 3 litre bucket, filling it to the brim. Left in the 5 litre bucket would be 2 litres of water. Note the depth. And now, transfer 2 litres of water from the 3 litre bucket into it, fill as per the depth of 2 litres, as noted earlier. Voila!

Anonymous said...

Hi,
See if this is right. Fill water in the 5 lt can. Poru this in 3 lt can. What is remaining is 2 lt.Repeat again and you get 4 lts of water.

Saravanan said...

Congrates Anu, you got it right...
Hi ananymous, You have got good thinking power, Though its a good way to solve the problem. noting the depth may be avoided by the other answers.

Lakshmi - Your effort is also appreciable. But to repeat the step you need another 5 lits can, but what you have is only one each.

Anyway, congrates for all you again for the brainy try. Check out my answer

Anonymous said...

Hey thats interesting..
Keep posting to keep us busy!

Saravanan said...

Yep, Its really interesting to see everybody cracking their brain to come up with unique way of answering the puzzle. I'm impressed with new answers for the same problem...I will try to keep you all busy with many more interesting puzzle