Can you solve the giant iron riddle? - Alex Gendler
- 2,021,466 Views
- 5,355 Questions Answered
- TEDEd Animation
Let’s Begin…
The family of giants you work for is throwing a fancy dinner party, but there’s a problem — the elder giant’s favorite shirt is wrinkled! To fix it, you’ll need to power up the giant iron. It needs two batteries to work, but the baby giant mixed the working battery pile with the dead pile. Can you test the batteries so that you get a working pair in seven tries or less? Alex Gendler shows how.
Additional Resources for you to Explore
This problem uses a formula known as the binomial coefficient to calculate how many ways there are to choose a given number of objects from a larger set, assuming that their order doesn’t matter. For more information, you can read about the binomial coefficient, the binomial theorem, and Pascal’s Triangle.
TED-Ed
Lesson Creator
New York, NY
Create and share a new lesson based on this one.
More from Math in Real Life
Mathematics
The paradox at the heart of mathematics: Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem
lesson duration 05:20
