Each of the bottles mentioned in this question contains 50 ml of liquid. The liquid in any bottle can be 100% pure content (P) or can have certain amount of impurity (I). Visually it is not possible to distinguish between P and I. There is a testing device which detects impurity, as long as the percentage of impurity in the content tested is 10% or more.
For example, suppose bottle 1 contains only P, and bottle 2 contains 80% P and 20% I. If content from bottle 1 is tested, it will be found out that it contains only P. If content of bottle 2 is tested, the test will reveal that it contains some amount of I. If 10 ml of content from bottle 1 is mixed with 20 ml content from bottle 2, the test will show that the mixture has impurity, and hence we can conclude that at least one of the two bottles has I. However, if 10 ml of content from bottle 1 is mixed with 5 ml of content from bottle 2. the test will not detect any impurity in the resultant mixture.
There are four bottles. Each bottle is known to contain only P or only I. They will be considered to be “collectively ready for despatch” if all of them contain only P. In minimum how many tests, is it possible to ascertain whether these four bottles are “collectively ready for despatch”?
Correct Answer: 1
The bottles contain either P(pure) or I(impure). The possible cases here are :
1- (P, P, P, P), 2-(P,P,P,I), 3-(P,P,I,I), 4-(P,I,I,I), 5-(I,I,I,I).
In the first case if all the four solutions are pure then taking equal volumes of all the four bottles will get the result to dispatch or not to dispatch.
In the second case if 3 bottles are pure and one impure taking equal volumes of all four bottles and testings will confirm the impurity and hence cannot be dispatched.
In the third case if 2 bottles are pure and two are impure taking equal volumes of all four bottles and testing will confirm the impurity and hence cannot be dispatched.
In the fourth case when only one bottle is pure taking equal volumes of all four bottles will confirm the impurity and hence cannot be dispatched.
In the fifth case if all four bottles are impure taking equal volumes of the four bottles will confirm the impurity and hence cannot be dispatched.
In all the cases a single test is enough to determine if the lot is to be dispatched or not.
Video Solution
