Mind Benders, Part 1
See if you can solve this brain teaser:
The setup: You are at the entrance of a large house. At the far end of the house is an empty room with a single light bulb. The door to this room is closed, allowing no light to escape. On the wall next to you are three standard on/off electrical switches. One of these three switches turns the bulb on and off. The other two switches do nothing.
The goal: You must determine which one of the three switches controls the bulb.
The limitation: You can only make one trip to the room with the bulb, and you can’t come back to the light switches once you are in the room. Before you go to the room, however, you can do whatever you like to the switches (without disassembling, of course: no cheating!), and you can take as much time as you like.
So, what would you do? How exactly would you determine which of the three switches controls the bulb? Post your guesses and questions as a comment, and I’ll do my best to respond quickly. I’ll post the answer next Saturday.
6 comments March 18th, 2006