You have been given 10 bags of pearls. You are told that one of the bags is full of those cheap plastic kind of pearls, but the other nine are the real deal. Naturally, you cannot tell the difference just by looking. However, you know that the fake pearls weigh 9 grams each, while the real ones are one gram heavier and weigh 10.

Armed with a very presice scale, you could weigh a pearl from each bag until you find the fake one by weight, but that would take up to 10 weighings. Can you do it in less?

(In reply to re: Solution by friedlinguini)

Actually, you are both off. there are T(10) pearls on the scale, but Rich was talking about the weight if they were all genuine, not the number, so the ideal weight is 10[T(10)]. The actual weight is (10[T(10)] - f) where f is the number of the bag with the fakes.

Posted by TomM on 2002-10-08 18:27:22