1, cake of mathematical genius

One day, a math genius celebrated his birthday with his friends. They decided to divide the cake into equal parts, but the math genius asked an interesting question: If there are 17 candles on the cake, how can they cut the cake so that everyone can get a complete candle? After some thinking, they cut the cake into 16 portions, each person got a candle, and put the remaining candles in the center of the cake.

2. Smart farmers

A clever farmer has 17 cows, but he only has three ropes. He wants to tie all the cows together with these three ropes, but he doesn't want them to get entangled. How do farmers do this? The answer is that he put a rope around the neck of the first cow, the second rope around the neck of the first and second cows, the third rope around the neck of the second and third cows, and so on until the last cow.

3. Magic numbers

Please think of a number, multiply it by 2, then add 8, then divide the result by 2, and finally subtract the number you originally thought. You will find that the final result is 4. How does this magic number work? Assuming that the number you first think of is x, according to the above operation, we can list the following equation: ((2x+8)/2)-x=4. Simplify the equation and get x=4, which means that no matter what number you think at first, the final result will be 4.

4. Mathematicians' candy

A mathematician has two children. They always demand a fair distribution of sweets. In order to solve this problem, mathematicians have designed an ingenious method. He first gave five sweets to the first child and seven sweets to the second child.

Then, he told the children that he would put their candy in a bag, but he would add some extra candy to the bag. Mathematicians set the number of sweets in the bag as the average of the initial candy numbers of two children, that is, (5+7)/2=6 sweets. In this way, each child will get the same amount of candy in the end.