#205 Buried shields
Set by Peter Rowlett
The burial chamber of Queen Count-M-Up of the Mat e鈥橫atic people has been discovered! Archaeologists know that her people greatly appreciated diversity in life, and they believe she was buried with a set of painted shields that illustrate this by displaying all possible combinations of three colours (gold, silver and blue) in four sections.
Opening the tomb, they quickly find seven complete shields and one broken one. What colour is the missing section? And when they discover the ninth shield, what will it look like?
Solution next week
#204 Think of a number
Solution
My son chose the number 5. Experimenting with a couple of numbers quickly confirms that he couldn鈥檛 have repeated steps 1, 2, 3 or 5 and ended with the number 1. So he must have repeated step 4, meaning that he subtracted 60 twice. Starting with the number 1 and working back through the steps, you will find that the number he chose could only have been 5.
Quick quiz #185
set by Bethan Ackerley
1 Who invented the voltaic pile in 1799?
2 The bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi causes which disease?
3 A plant that grows on another plant but isn鈥檛 parasitic is known as what?
4 The tears of wine phenomenon, where beads of clear liquid appear inside a glass of wine and drip down, is caused by which effect?
5 Which of Jupiter鈥檚 Galilean moons isn鈥檛 an icy world?
Quick quiz #185
Answers
1 Alessandro Volta
2 Lyme disease
3 An epiphyte
4 The Marangoni effect
5 Io