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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)

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Solution a practical solution | Comment 16 of 38 |
Because of the way water freezes, it takes up the same amount of space whether it is frozen or melted (I know it's counter intuitive but you can look it up). Anyway, you don't need to know how many cubes make four cups (besides, different cubes will end up being different sizes) all you need to know is the ratio which is half tea, half water/ice. When you pour the tea into glasses for the guests to drink, fill each one half full of tea (or just below half since you don't want it to overflow) and add ice cubes until the total volume of tea and ice is twice the original volume of tea in the glass. The ratio is maintained and you can serve the tea immediately.
  Posted by Lee on 2004-03-17 12:45:06
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