Riddle Me This: Water Buckets
Test your skills of deduction with the August 2024 edition of Riddle Me This: Water Buckets.
You have a 5-gallon bucket, a 3-gallon bucket, and a water faucet. How can you accurately put four gallons of water into the 5-gallon bucket?
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Alternate way: Starts the same as the solution offered: fill the 5-gallon bucket, pour it into the 3-gallon bucket until full leaving 2 gallons in the 5-gallon bucket. Drain the 3-gallon bucket and refill it with the two gallons of water from the 5-gallon bucket. Fill the 5-gallon bucket again. Lower the 3-gallon bucket into the 5-gallon bucket allowing the displaced water to spill over the side of the 5-gallon bucket but don’t allow any water to enter the 3-gallon bucket. When the two buckets are equal in elevation at the rim, remove the 3-gallon bucket, leaving two gallons in the 5-gallon bucket. Now add the two gallons that are in the 3-gallon bucket. The 5-gallon bucket now has 4 gallons in it.
A little less accurate due to the additional volume of the bucket wall thickness, but roughly the same results.
Easier way:
1. Fill the 5 gallon bucket with 3 gallons from the other bucket.
2. Fill the 3 gallon bucket again, and use it to fill the 5 gallon bucket to the top, leaving 1 gallon in the 3 gallon bucket.
3. Dump the 5 gallon bucket.
4. Dump the 1 gallon (from the 3 gallon bucket) into the 5 gallon bucket, then fill it to add 3 more gallons.
Good solutions. My way was to fill each 1/2 full, leaving 2.5 gallons and 1.5 gallons in each respectively. You’d have to “eyeball” 1/2 and accuracy would be a little off. Put the 1.5 gallons in the big bucket and you have 4 total.