Question

ANSWER IT Question :-You have 10 boxes of balls (each ball weighing exactly10 gm) with one box with defective balls (each one of the defective balls weigh 9 gm). You are given an electronic weighing machine and only one chance at it. How will find out which box has the defective balls?

Answer 1

For convenience sake, let’s name the boxes from 1 to 10. In order to solve this problem, you have to leverage the fact that you know exactly what each good ball is supposed to weigh and what each defective ball is supposed to weigh. Many of us instinctively will take one ball out of each box and try to find a way to make it work but the trick to take different number of balls from each box.

The number of balls you pick from each bag is equal to the box number. For example, pick 1 ball from box 1, 2 balls from box 2 and so on. In total you will have 55 balls. If all of the boxes have good balls, then the total weight of these balls would be 550gm.

If box 1 has defective balls, then the total weight should be 1gm less than expected (only one ball weighing 9 gm). If box 2 has defective balls, then the total weight should be 2gm less than expected (two balls weighing 9 gm). So once you weigh the set of chosen balls, find out the difference between the total weight and the expected weight. That number represents the box number which contains the defective balls.

If you like puzzles with balls and balances, you might like 8 Identical balls problem


or 2nd method
Approach is correct. So if you take 1 ball, 2 balls, 3 balls ...etc from all 10 boxes, you will have 55 balls. Now the weight of each ball (non defective) is 10 gm. So assuming there are no defective balls , the weight of 55 balls would be 55 X 10 gm. But since there are some defective balls, which we do not know how many are, let us say Z, we need to subtract that weight from 550 gm. So 550 - (weight of each defective ball) X number of defective balls Z. The equation would be 550 - 9Z = weight shown by weighing machine. Solve for Z