You have two ropes. You know that each rope takes one hour to burn from one end to the other, but that the burning does not take place at a constant rate (i.e. half the rope may burn in one minute, and the other half will take 59 more minutes to burn).

How would you go about measuring a 45 minute time interval with just these two ropes?

Yea i had seen this puzzle before on Discover channel, except it had 3 wicks and a different time, I was happy because i was actually able to solve it.

anyways, if you bend one rope into a loop, and set it on fire at any point in the loop (same as lighting it from both ends) it burns in half the time.  So I was thinking you could consider this as a 'rope' that burned in 30mins, so if you twist it then light it at both ends; would it burn in 15mins?

Only problem i can see with this is that it might actually change the way it burns.

 

 

Posted by gabbo on 2004-09-15 21:46:54