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Mike
Carruthers:
In just the last few years, many employers have started asking
puzzle-like questions in job interviews; things like…
William Poundstone:
How
would you weigh a jet-plane without using scales? Why are beer
cans tapered on the ends?
William Poundstone, author of the book How
Would you Move Mount Fuji?, says these questions are designed
to test your problem-solving skills and your creative thinking.
So how would you weigh a plane without using scales?
The answer that's usually considered the best one is that you
put the jet-plane on a big boat or ferry somewhere, and of course
from the weight of the jet-plane, the boat is going to sink down
in the water. So you draw a line on the hull of the boat where
the water line is. And then you can take the jet-plane off…the
boat is going to rise up in the water. The final step is, you
start loading that boat with 100-pound sacks of concrete until
it sinks down in the water to that line that you've drawn, and
just count the number of sacks of concrete…and that tells you
how much the jet-plane must have weighed.
And the reason why beer and soda cans are tapered at each end
and fatter in the middle…
It's basically to save metal. You'll notice that the thickest
part of the can is the top because it has to stand up to the stress
of the flip-top. So someone decided that they could shrink the
top a little and save a little bit of aluminum. But if they do
that, they also have to shrink the bottom so that the cans will
still stack. And that's why basically, every beer can and soda
can now has that particular shape.
At
somethingyoushouldknow.net, I'm Mike Carruthers and that's
Something You Should Know.
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