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?

(In reply to solution by Daniel)

another thought I just had is that if the vehicle in question were a truck or suv it would most likely have a much larger gas tank, this is because vehicles are designed to have a gas tank large enough to last around 400 miles on a full tank.  Thus if it has a 16 gallon tank it probably has a feul economy of around  25 miles/gallon which is enough to satisfy the conditions I gave

Posted by Daniel on 2007-09-23 13:37:05