Are you smarter than a 5th grader?
I recently got this 5th grade math problem in my email and thought it would be fun to share with you all. It came with an Excel attachment that required a password to open it—the answer being the password. I’m not big on forwarding emails of this type to people, so I’ll just post it here. If you’d like to try the challenge yourself and add your name to the spreadsheet to pass on to friends, leave your name in the comments and I’ll be glad to send it to you.
5th Grade Math ProblemUPDATE: Answer is posted in the comments. Don't look there if you want to try this out first.
Good luck!
This is a 5th grade math problem. If you can open the spreadsheet, you’ll see it’s a very small list of people who have gotten the correct number. This is not a trick question. This is a real math problem so don’t say that a bus has no legs.
There are 7 girls in a bus.
Each girl has 7 backpacks.
In each backpack, there are 7 big cats.
For every big cat there are 7 little cats.
Question: How many legs are there in the bus?
is the answer 14?
Sorry, try again. The answer is much much higher than 14. Read the question again carefully.
What's the answer?
Is the answer 9618 legs???
Yahooooooo I got it! Now I can go to sleep... :D
If you want to try this math problem out first, don't read any further. To arrive at the answer, first find the number of big cats there are on the bus (7 girls x 7 backpacks x 7 big cats = 343 big cats.) Multiply 343 big cats by 4 (number of legs on a cat) and you get 1,372 legs of the big cats.
Next, find the number of little cats there are on the bus (343 big cats x 7 little cats = 2401 little cats.) Multiply 2401 little cats by 4 and get 9,604 legs of the little cats.
Last but not least, we need the number of the girls' legs on the bus (7 girls x 2 = 14 legs.)
Finally, add up total number of legs from the big cats, little cats and the girls, and you should get 10,990 total legs on the bus.