Re: Maths problems (interesting ones)
 

can you explain the answer to27 please?

Re: Maths problems (interesting ones)
 

The camel starts out with 1000 bananas. He walks 250 miles towards his goal, drops 500 bananas, and walks back. He takes 1000 more bananas from the stock.

Then he walks 250 miles toward his goal, picks up 250 more bananas, and keeps walking. Now he holds 1000, there are 250 bananas at 250 miles, and 1000 bananas at home. He walks 250 more miles, drops 500 bananas, and walks all the way back, using the 250 bananas he has plus the 250 more he has stashed at 250 miles. Then he takes the last 1000 from his original stash, and walks all the way to his goal, picking up 500 extra when he passes 500 miles.

Re: Maths problems (interesting ones)
 

ahh cunning!

Re: Maths problems (interesting ones)
 

That is close, but you can get even more bananas out of this method.

28)

I am fairly sure I have the right answers here. You can set up the equation that has T for the time in minutes and X for the difference between the hour hand and the minute hand in rotations as -11T/720 = X. This becomes -11T = {90, 810, 1530, 2250, 2970, 3690, 4410, 5130, 5850, 6570, 7290}, as you substitute 0.125, 1.125, 2.125, etc... for X (because 0.125 is the distance from 12:00 to 1:30, and as time goes on, you have to add full rotations). All the info is written here.