*Submitted by Dr. Ted Stanford, NMSU Mathematician.
- If a chicken and a half lays an egg and a half in a day and a half, how long does it take one chicken to lay a dozen eggs?
Problem 1 Answer: 18 days
Explanation: Replace “a chicken and a half lays an egg and a half” with “one chicken lays one egg”, and you will get that “one chicken lays one egg in a day and a half”. So 12 eggs times a day and a half per egg is 18 days. There are other solution methods as well. The tricky part is to realize that you can only rescale two of the three numbers at a time – you can’t divide all three numbers by 1.5 and say that one chicken lays one egg in one day.