A man is the owner of a winery who recently passed away. In his will, he left 21 barrels (seven of which are filled with wine, seven of which are half full, and seven of which are empty) to his three sons. However, the wine and barrels must be split so that each son has the same number of full barrels, the same number of half-full barrels, and the same number of empty barrels.( Note that there are no measuring devices handy).

How can the barrels and wine be evenly divided?

if you empty all of the wine in one barrel of half filled wine to another barrel of half filled wine you'll get 8 fully filled barrels, 5 half filled barrels and 8 empty barrels. repeat this step, you'll get 9 fully filled barrels, 3 half filled barrels and 9 empty barrels. thus the 3 men can split these barrels among themselves equally.

i figured that you can't use another method of pouring half of the wine in a fully filled barrel to an empty to make the number of fully filled barrles 6, half filled barrels 9 and empty barrels 6, since it was mentioned that no measuring devices was available though this method would be much easier.

Posted by Jun on 2003-08-07 08:45:18