The Magic of Engineering for the Customer
Creating a schedule for the first time can be a daunting task, especially for a first year engineering student. There are so many aspects to consider…
College interviews are fun. You get to talk about your interests and where you see yourself going in college, which hopefully isn't too scary. And they don't last very long--my shortest college interview was 10 minutes!
Technical interviews, however, are a completely different animal. They're usually 45 minutes long and involve you writing code on a whiteboard (or in a Google Doc). Between two summers of internships and full-time applications, I've done a lot of interviews. I stopped counting when I hit #20 during internship application season last year!
Sometimes, though, technical interviewers will ask you to solve some sort of puzzle in addition to (or instead of) writing code on a whiteboard. I've gotten a couple of these during my adventures in technical interviews. Some are fun; some are not. Here are two of my most memorable interview questions, and one more that you can post answers to in the comments!
Q. You have nine marbles. One is slightly heavier than the others, but the difference is imperceptible to you. You have a balance that can detect the difference, but you're only allowed to use it twice. How do you determine which one is the heavy one?
A. Break up the marbles into three groups of three. Put two sets on the balance. If it balances, the heavy marble is in the third group. If it doesn't, the heavy marble is in the group that brings the balance down. Choose two marbles from the group containing the heavy marble and place them on the balance. If it balances, the heavy marble is the one you didn't put on the balance. If it doesn't...it's the heavy one!
Q. You have two pieces of string. Each burns in one hour, but they don't burn uniformly (i.e. you can't determine how long it's been by looking at the string until the whole string has burned up). How do you measure 45 minutes?
A. Light both ends of one string and one end of the second string on fire. When the string with both ends burning burns up, half an hour has passed. When this happens, light the other end of the other string on fire. When that string burns up, it's been forty-five minutes!
If you didn't get them, don't worry--I couldn't figure out the second one during my interview, either! Here's one more for you to think about. Comment with your answers!
Q. There are a thousand identical buckets filled with soda. One of the buckets contains diet soda; the rest contains regular soda. The diet soda will turn a particular paper indicator green in exactly thirty minutes. You need to locate the bucket with diet soda in one hour. How many indicator sticks do you need?
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