Weight of an Elephant..
By ratyz5
@ratyz5 (7808)
Philippines
February 10, 2008 8:34pm CST
Here we go..
Your distant grandfather gave you an elephant. A market close by was buying elephants, a high amount per kilo.
The market however doesn't have a weighting scale that can support an elephant since the max capacity it can weigh would only reach 12 kilos, so they'd give you an assumption of a given elephant and pay you according to such assumptions.
In order for you to know the weight of given elephant, your granfather accompanied you at a closeby lake wherein a boat was there, one that could accomodate the elephant. He gave you a pencil, a typical weighting scale that can measure up to 12 kilos and a mound of sand.
He wanted you to know the weight of the elephant using the given items. How would you do it?
1 person likes this
3 responses
@AICIRT81 (847)
• United States
11 Feb 08
put the boat in the water, put elephant in the boat, mark with pencil where the water level is one the boat. take elephant out of boat. leaving boat in water, add sand into boat until boat sinks to marked level where it was with elephant in. Weigh sand as you take it out and add it up. Built really big sand castle and thank grandpa for the great elephant gift that you are not going to sell because that would be rude.
@CAMILLERI (373)
• Australia
11 Feb 08
Average Elephant Weights :-
1) Male = 5,400 Kilos
2) Female = 3,600 Kilos
3) Heaviest Elephant ever = 6,600 Kilos
This might give you some idea.
A boat with markings (plimsol's line)
could help one measure the weight of an elephant
by the displacement of water.
2 people like this
@josephperera (2906)
• Sri Lanka
13 Feb 08
I was very active on mylot sometime back, but now I come here only once in a while. But it is a plesure to see discussions like this which are challenging and mind boggling. Pity that the answer is already given. But I could work it out before looking at the other two answers.
@ratyz5 (7808)
• Philippines
13 Feb 08
With over two thousand posts, you were indeed active ^_^
I wish I could post more but I still had to translate most of these problem into english since most of what I know are in our own native language.. then again, theses questions might have been from another country altogether ^_^;
Some would give alternate answers whenever somebody already gave the correct solutions that is recognized in the problem presented.
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