In Dan Finkel’s TED-Ed video, he shares this math puzzle, paraphrased as follows:
Dr. Schrödinger is creating an army of giant cats for villainous purposes. Your team of secret agents has located his lab, but needs to get through his unusual security system.
The system displays a single number, and has three buttons that control this number:
- Add 5
- Add 7
- Take the square root of the displayed number
Goal: make the numbers 2, 10, and 14 show on the display, in that order.
Rules:
- The display starts at 0.
- It’s fine if other numbers are displayed in between 2, 10, and 14, as long as they appear in that order.
- The system will malfunction if any number is displayed more than once.
- The system will malfunction if any number greater than 60 is displayed.
- The system will malfunction if any fraction/decimal is displayed.
How can you achieve this?
(Sorry, the giant cat army has nothing to do with the puzzle.)
Source: Dan Finkel and TED-Ed
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