A farmer walks into a store and heads for the counter. On the counter is a basket of hard-boiled eggs. The farmer says to the cashier,"I'll take half of your eggs plus half an egg."
The next day he walks in the store and says to the cashier,"I'll take half of your eggs plus half an egg."
On the third day, the farmer walks into the store and says th the cashier,"I'll take half of your eggs plus half an egg." There are now no more eggs in the basket. How many eggs were there to begin with?
Please help this doen't make any sense!
There were 3 eggs.
umm... can you please explain
half of three eggs is 1.5, plus half an egg is 2 eggs, leaving one.
The next day, he takes half the egg, plus a half. That is all the eggs.
the third day, no eggs remain to get.
You could work backwards to get the answer.
On the third day, he bought half the egg(s) plus half an egg. There was nothing left.
That means that what was left plus half an egg was half of what was there after he bought half of the eggs.
Therefore before he walked in, there were:
2 × (0+1/2)
=1 egg
Same happened on the second day, so before he walked in, there were:
2 × (1+1/2)
= 3 eggs.
Same happened on the first day, so before he walked in, there were:
2 × (3+1/2)
= 7 eggs.
Remember, we have assumed that there were no more nor less eggs than what he bought, no one else bought the eggs, and he bought what was left there from three days ago (yuck!).
You can now start with 7 eggs and go through the scenario and see if it still works.
To solve this riddle, let's break it down step by step.
1. The farmer says, "I'll take half of your eggs plus half an egg." On the first day, there are no specific numbers mentioned. We'll consider "x" as the initial number of eggs in the basket.
2. The next day, the farmer again says, "I'll take half of your eggs plus half an egg." This means the farmer took half of the eggs from the previous day (x/2) and added half of an egg. So, on the second day, there were (x/2) + 0.5 eggs left.
3. On the third day, the farmer takes half of the eggs from the second day [(x/2) + 0.5]/2, and adds half an egg. So, on the third day, there were [(x/2) + 0.5]/2 + 0.5 eggs left.
Now, we know that on the third day, there are no more eggs left in the basket. Therefore, [(x/2) + 0.5]/2 + 0.5 = 0.
To find the initial number of eggs (x), we can solve this equation step by step.
1. Multiply both sides of the equation by 2 to eliminate the fraction: [(x/2) + 0.5] + 1 = 0.
2. Simplify the equation: (x/2) + 1.5 = 0.
3. Subtract 1.5 from both sides of the equation: (x/2) = -1.5.
4. Multiply both sides of the equation by 2 to isolate x: x = -3.
Based on this calculation, it seems there were initially -3 eggs in the basket. However, this doesn't make sense in reality since we can't have a negative number of eggs. Therefore, the puzzle is flawed or contains ambiguous information.