Your boss liked how you solved the Tricky Pearls problem and has now given you a new one.

You have 5 bags of pearls. You are told that each bag contains either all genuine pearls, or all fake pearls. Real pearls weigh 10 grams and fake pearls weigh 9 grams.

Armed with a very precise scale, how can you figure out which bags contains the fake pearls with the fewest number of weighings?

But the problem asked for the fewest number of weighings. five is not fewer than one.

Posted by TomM on 2002-12-13 08:14:54