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5 weights (Posted on 2003-02-13) Difficulty: 3 of 5
An ancient balance was found along with 5 weights.

Objects placed on one side of the balance could be counter-balanced by a weight on the other side of the balance to determine the object's weight. Also, the object and a weight(s) could be placed on one side of the balance and counter balanced to determine its weight, if necessary.

By using only these 5 weights, the ancients were able to determine the weight of objects weighting 1, 2, 3, ..., 120, 121 grams. What are the 5 weights that the archeologists found?

See The Solution Submitted by Tara Ray    
Rating: 3.8571 (7 votes)

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re(2): Weights and Scales | Comment 4 of 6 |
(In reply to re: Weights and Scales by lecody)

This is a thinking outside the box solution, assuming that the person doing the weighing is actually going to weigh out 1 gram of something, then 2 grams of something else, etc. Of course once this happens, you need only that one 1-gram weight and the other four are unnecessary.

But the implication of the original problem was assumed to be that one wants to be prepared to weigh any of those amounts without having previously measured amounts on hand to use as if they also were weights.
  Posted by Charlie on 2003-02-23 10:49:33

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