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.

If all the ice cubes are the same volume, then the problem is easily solved by decanting one half of the strong tea into the the spare container and adding the ice cubes one at a time to each container until the level of the graduated container reaches 4?

This is basically one of the first answers submitted, with the twist that now all eight cups can be poured at the same time. 

Given the difficulty level of the problem (1 lump) that is probably it? 

 Science note: Ice cubes melt in hot tea.

Edited on February 25, 2006, 5:53 pm

Edited on February 25, 2006, 5:55 pm

Posted by goFish on 2006-02-25 17:52:58