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Icin' the Tea (Posted on 2004-03-09) Difficulty: 1 of 5
This actually happened to me...

  My wife and I were cookin' a Cajun feast for the anniversaire de ma mere. While I handled the vittles, the lovely and talented Mrs. Boy made the drinks.
  She had made the tea strong and wanted to dilute it with 4 cups of water but the guests were at the door and the tea was still hot so she decided to dilute it with ice instead.
  She turned to me and said, "Fat, sweetie, how many ice cubes make a cup of water?"
  I confessed that I did not know as I had not measured the water when I made the cubes. To make matters worse I had not paid attention to how full I had made the trays so we couldn't just refill them and see how much they held.
  Things seemed desperate, as I'd die before I'd serve my Gumbo without sweet tea, but Mrs. Boy is no fool and she found a way. The tea was just right (though the cheese grits were a little burnt).

How did Mrs. B manage to ascertain the proper number of ice cubes to produce the 4 cups of water needed to dilute the tea? All she had to use was the ice cubes themselves, an ungraduated glass pitcher of unknown volume and the 4 cup graduated Pyrex measuring cup full of (too strong) tea.

See The Solution Submitted by FatBoy    
Rating: 3.3333 (6 votes)

Comments: ( Back to comment list | You must be logged in to post comments.)
Solution 3/4 of the way there | Comment 36 of 38 |
Pour 1 cup of tea from the graduated Pyrex measuring cup into the ungraduated glass pitcher.  Add ice cubes to the tea in the Pyrex cup one by one until the level of the tea rises to the 4 cup mark.  You have now added the equivalent of one cup of water. 
If we assume all the ice cubes are the same volume, and have counted the ice cubes added to this point, all we need to do is multiply by 4 to ascertain the proper number of ice cubes.

Otherwise, we can simply remove the ice cubes from the Pyrex cup and put them in the pitcher, pour a bit of the slightly diluted tea from the Pyrex cup into the pitcher and then repeat the process three more times, adding enough cubes to raise the tea level by one cup each time.
  Posted by Mindrod on 2006-02-23 00:10:32
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