THE’Turtle height riddle went around the web driving everyone crazy. What is your solution? We see it in this article
The situation is this: a rThe bowl with a turtle on it is 230 cm highwhile the distance between the turtle’s head and the top of the rock is 200 cm. So how tall is the turtle? The vast majority of interviewees intuitively answer 30 cm, sometimes even 60 cm. But these solutions are not correct! Let’s see why.
If the height of the turtle was 30 cm, the drawing on the right would tell us that the rock is a total of 200 cm + 30 cm = 230 cm high. But the drawing on the left instead tells us that 230 cm is the height of the rock with the turtle on it. Clearly, rock and rock with a turtle on it cannot have the same height, so 30 cm is not the solution because it leads to an absurdity. We discovered, however, that the turtle cannot be taller than 30 cm, because if it were, the drawing on the right would tell us that the rock is taller than the rock with the turtle on it, which is impossible.
To find the solution, we can use intuition and try things out, or set up two simple mathematical equations. But don’t worry! We know that
left drawing: rock + turtle = 230 cm
right drawing: rock – turtle = 200 cm
at this point in the first of the two equations we can explain the value of the rock, they bring the variable turtle in the other term of the equation:
rock = 230 cm – turtle
At this point we can replace the value of rock inside the second equation and solve it:
rock – turtle = 200 cm
230 cm – tortoise – turtle = 200 cm
230 cm – 2(turtle) = 200 cm
230 cm – 200 = 2(tortoise)
30cm = 2(tortoise)
turtle =30cm/2= 15cm
The height of the turtle is therefore 15 cm.
