The ink-sport

            One day, Mummu set a very interesting problem to me. She pusher a large circular table we have at home, into the corner of the room, so that it touched both walls and spilled a spot of ink on the extreme edge, and she said, ‘Mummy here is a little puzzle for you. Look at that sport. It is exactly eight inches from one wall and nine inches from the other. Now tell me the diameter of the table without measuring it……….

Can you?

Answer:    Double the product of the two distances from the wall and you get 144. Which is the square of 12. The sum of the two distances is 17, and when we ass these two numbers, 12 and 17 together and also subtract one from the other, we get two answers 29 and 5 as the radius, or half – diameter of the table. 

                Naturally the diameter should be 58”or 10”. However, a table of the latter dimensions cannot be a ‘large circular table ‘and therefore, the table must be 58” in diameter.