New Delhi, Nov 07:Not long ago when a really intelligent young friend of mine was trying to get into an impressive college and had to face murderous competition by way of a killer entrance test, I called another friend who was a senior professor (SP) in the same place and asked him/her how about coughing up some of the key questions. "But that's not right," says SP, horrified down to the hoppers. "Yeah yeah," I replied. So's smoking grass and driving without a seat belt not legal eagle, but both of which you've done."

That changed SP's tactics. "Look," he/she goes, "if your friend's so smart he'll get in anyway." "Then it doesn't really make a difference either way, right?" I asked but came away barren all the same.
Later when I recounted the above to another person I thought I'd known for years he was even more shocked though from another angle.


"You'd just be giving your friend rope to hang himself with," he says to me. And this from someone who's given himself so much rope they have to swing him twice a day just to keep using it up. I tell you, some people simply freak the cranium out of my skull.

Anyway, the rope bit reminded me of this.
A rope is passed over a pulley. It has a weight at one end and a monkey at the other. There is the same length of rope on either side and equilibrium is maintained. The rope weighs 113 gms per 0.3 metre.


The age of the monkey and the age of the monkey's mother together total four years. The weight of the monkey is as many kgs as the monkey's mother is years old.
The monkey's mother is twice as old as the monkey was when the monkey's mother was half as old as the monkey will be when the monkey is three times as old as the monkey's mother was when the monkey's mother was three times as old as the monkey. The weight of the rope and the weight at the end is half as much again as the difference in weight between the weight of the weight and the weight of the weight and the weight of the monkey.