hseeadvaitleyd wrote:The riddle seemed so simple to me that I didn't bother looking at it in depth like some of you have lol.
I got 100 plain and simple. Though I'm not ANY good whatsoever with math. It made sense to me that if .5% of the block chips off on one stroke then another stroke takes off a full 1%. to get to 50% when going by 1% each time it would take you 50 hits. but since it takes two hits to get a full % I multiplied it by 2 and therefore got 100. Sounds pretty lame and stupid doesn't it? lol
No, it doesn't sound stupid, just that you misread the question.
Even going by your math, they ask for "less than" 50%, so it would be 101 hits. However, each chip doesn't take off .5% of the ORIGINAL block each time, but .5% of what's left of the block after however many swings you've already taken at it.
Not that THAT makes any sense--how does the chisel know how much block happens to be left?
"But it's no ordinary chisel... It's MAGIC!" Suuuuure...
If that's confusing to you, you can look at that old riddle that says, "A flea at one side of a room going to the other side of the room always jumps half of the remaining distance each time it jumps..." If it does that, it will "never" reach the other side, because there will always be some remaining distance left, even if *practically* speaking it will be close enough to the other side to effectively be there. Similarly, the chisel in the LC will never reduce the block to 0%, even if *practically* speaking eventually you'll wind up smashing atoms after so many hits.
