You have two identical eggs, and are given the task of figuring out the highest floor of a 100-story building from which an egg can be dropped safely (meaning that it doesn't break). You have no prior information about this matter, so for all you know a fall from the first floor might break the egg, but then again, it might be strong enough to survive a 100-story drop.

You need to conduct experiments by dropping the eggs from various levels in the building to solve the problem. You are allowed to break both eggs as long as you come up with an answer.

Find a strategy to minimize the maximum number of drops you would have to do. What is this number? (For example if your strategy is dropping an egg from first, then second, then third floors, and so on until it breaks, the maximum number of drops is 100.)

(In reply to Another thing you could do by Aeternus)

This strategy would still yield a maximum of 50 drops, if the last "safe" floor is 49. The problem asks you to minimize the worst case outcome. As long as we're making assumptions one could as well say that Cheradenine's strategy will result in two drops if the answer is 51, but that's not what we're looking for.

Posted by levik on 2002-10-01 06:48:02