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Question:  The owner of a banana plantation has a camel. He wants to transport his 3000 bananas to the market, which is located after the desert. The distance between his banana plantation and the market is about 1000 kilometer. So he decided to take his camel to carry the bananas. The camel can carry at the maximum of 1000 bananas at a time, and it eats one banana for every kilometer it travels. What is the largest number of bananas that can be delivered to the market? Challenge:  Do you know the answer to this question? Post in the comments. At KM#0, we have 3000 bananas. The maximum bananas the camel can carry is 1000 so the camel must at least make 3 trips from the start point.  (Leave #0, Return to #0, Leave #0, Return to #0, Leave #0) . If we move just 1km, we need 1 banana for each step mentioned above thus making a total of  5 bananas for each km . We continue making 3 trips until we reach a banana count of 2000. 3000 – 5*d = 2000 => d = 200 At #...

Question:  Given a fleet of 50 trucks, each with a full fuel tank and a range of 100 miles, how far can you deliver a payload? You can transfer the payload from truck to truck, and you can transfer fuel from truck to truck. Assume all the payload will fit in one truck. Challenge:  Do you know the answer to this question? Post in the comments. We want to use as little fuel as possible so we try minimize the number of trucks we use as we go along. Let’s say we start with all 50 trucks with full fuel (5000 miles range). For each mile, we lose 50 miles in range. After two miles, we lose 100 miles leaving us with 4900 miles. This can be supported by 49 trucks so we drop one truck. As you can see for every 100 miles we lose in range, we drop a truck. 50 trucks: 100/50 49 trucks: 100/49 … Total distance = 100/50 + 100/49 + 100/48 + … + 100/2 + 100/1 (harmonic series) = 449.920533833