From Tanks to Coins
I already wrote about my favorite problem from the 2015 All-Russian Math Olympiad that involved tanks. My second favorite problem is about coins. I do love almost every coin problem.
Share:A coin collector has 100 coins that look identical. He knows that 30 of the coins are genuine and 70 fake. He also knows that all the genuine coins weigh the same and all the fake coins have different weights, and every fake coin is heavier than a genuine coin. He doesn’t know the exact weights though. He has a balance scale without weights that he can use to compare the weights of two groups with the same number of coins. What is the smallest number of weighings the collector needs to guarantee finding at least one genuine coin?
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