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?

Taking Daniel's idea a bit further, the man could put his car in neutral and push it a few miles to the pump.  Then fill the tank until the pump shuts off.

It's possible if the route is relatively flat or downhill.  Uphill, not so much.

To satisfy the full requirements of the problem, the man, being extremely tired and delusional from his trek to the station, decides to push the car back to where he got stranded.  You'd be out of it too if you pushed a car a few miles.

Or perhaps the man is one of those ironman competitors that pull trucks 30 meters, flip tractor tires, and throw full kegs over 15 foot bars.  He might want to push the car back to where he started just to 'finish the workout'.

Posted by Guest on 2007-09-24 22:00:35