There are two buckets A and B.

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There are initially 2 liters. At the one hour mark we remove a liter to get 1 liter. At 1.5 hours we add half a liter to get 1.5 liters. At 2 hour mark we remove a liter to get 0.5 liters. At 2.5 hour mark we add half a liter to get 1 liter. At 3 hour mark we remove a liter to get 0 liters, and we are finished. Thus, the answer is $3$ hours. (this assumes we make the first transfer at the one hour mark instead of the zero hour mark, and that a half liter is added only added every other half hour (I. E. at noninteger hour points)

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Nagmani
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Nagmani

Updated on August 01, 2022

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  • Nagmani
    Nagmani over 1 year

    There are two buckets A and B. Initially A has 2 litres of water and B is empty. At every hour 1 litre of water is transferred from A to B followed by returning litre back to A from B half an hour later. The earliest A will get empty is in: A) $1.5h$

    B) $4h$

    C) $3h$

    D) $2h$

    • Admin
      Admin almost 8 years
      Welcome to MSE! Can you share what you've tried and what you're having trouble with?
    • Nagmani
      Nagmani almost 8 years
      according to me answer should be 2h but some one asked it will be 3 h, so I m confused ..
    • Ross Millikan
      Ross Millikan almost 8 years
      You should make a list of the contents of each bucket after each transfer. Does the first transfer happen at hour 0 or hour 1?
    • Nagmani
      Nagmani almost 8 years
      Description:-We can transfer one litre of water from A to B every hour, so we can initiate the first transection any time between 12 PM to 1 PM and next transection after one hour of 1st transection. As per question we have to find earliest time in which A will empty so we have to do 1st transection as soon as possible and that is 12 PM.
    • Nagmani
      Nagmani almost 8 years
      @ Ross Millikan can we do the first transfer at 0 hr ?
  • Nagmani
    Nagmani almost 8 years
    If we will get both the bucket as 12 PM. We can transfer one litre of water from A to B every hour, so we can initiate the first transection any time between 12 PM to 1 PM and next transection after one hour of 1st transection. As per question we have to find earliest time in which A will empty so we have to do 1st transection as soon as possible and that is 12 PM
  • Brevan Ellefsen
    Brevan Ellefsen almost 8 years
    @Nagmani Alright, you should include this in your question. If you do the first transfer immediately as your comment says everything I write above holds, you just have to subtract and hour from everything (since you don't initially wait an hour). In that case, the answer IS 2 hours. You aren't really clear on which way the problem should be interpreted, hence your confusion. You need to provide the correct interpretation.