Puzzle: champagne bottle
Puzzle: champagne bottle
Wednesday, 23 December 2009
I often use a logic puzzle as an ice-breaker to get workshop participants thinking and working together. Working under time pressure often also brings out some interesting group dynamics.
Problem
You have a full champagne bottle and only a ruler for measuring. How do you calculate the volume of the bottle?
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Comments (1)

Champagne bottles are tricky
written by Ralph, Thursday, 28 January 2010
written by Ralph, Thursday, 28 January 2010
I would say that this example is flawed. Champagne bottles have the special feature of an inwards directed cone in the bottom. Assume that the volume of this cone is A. Then the first measurement covers h1*B-A and the second measurement h2*B-A. And you have to make sure that the level of the liquid does for the first measurement completely cover the cone and for the second not touch the cone. The proposed solution therefore overstates the volume by 2A. But it works well with any other bottle.
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