A man runs his car out of gas thereby completely emptying his 16 gallon tank. He only has a 3, a 6, and a 11 gallon container (and fortunately a wagon to carry the containers in) in his trunk. He has nothing else in which he can carry gas. He walks a few miles to a gas station, and as luck would have it the gauge on the pump is broken so he can not use that to measure the fuel. He is in a pretty remote area with only one gas station for miles. Gas costs $3.09⁹, and he only has a $50. Using only the containers provided, and only walking once to and from the gas station, how can he get exactly 16 gallons of gas into his car?

well you state that the guage is busted but for my solution I am going to assume that the device that automatically shuts off the pump when the vehicle gas tank is still working.  Having stated that my solution is quite simple, fill the 11 gallon container, walk back to your vehicle, put 11 gallons into your tank, drive back to the gas station, fill the rest of your tank up with gas.  Now as for affording this, the first 11 gallons costs $34.089  and another 5 gallons costs $15.495 which leaves you with $0.416 to cover what little gas you used up to drive the few miles back to the gas station.  Now one last thing to consider is feul economy of the vehicle, in other words, would $0.416 cover the amount of gas used to get to the gas station.  $0.416 will get you 0.134 gallons of gas.  Now the problem states the gas station is only a few miles away so lets say the gas station is 3 miles away, that would mean in order for the vehicle to consume more than 0.134 gallons during the short drive it would have to have a fuel economy of less than 22.34 gallons.  Most "cars" meet this requirement but of course several trucks and suv's do not.  So I guess it is up to argument as to weather or not my solution is complete.

Posted by Daniel on 2007-09-23 13:31:51