An engineer must test three space suits in two test chambers. Each suit must be tested for 1 hour at each of two pressures.

He takes 10 minutes to load a suit in a chamber, set the pressure, and start the test; 4 minutes to change the pressure in the chamber; and 10 minutes to unload a suit from a chamber.

Knowing that each chamber could contain only one suit at once, and since he can only do one load/unload at a time, can he manage to test the suits in less than 4 hours ?

Chamber A:

Suit 1 Pressures B and A 10+4+60+4+60+10 = 148 min.

Suit 2 Pressure A: 10+60+10= 80 min.

Total time Chamber A = 228 min = 3 h + 48 min.

Chamber B:

Suit 2 Pressure B: (the beginning is 10 minutes after the beginning in Chamber A). So the test finish at 10+10+4+60+10 = 94 min.

Suit 3 Pressures B and A: 10+60+4+60+10 = 144 min.

Total time Chamber B: 144 + 94 = 238 min = 3 h + 58 min.

What a narrow scape!

Edited on June 7, 2005, 2:16 pm

Posted by armando on 2005-06-07 14:12:18