re: Solve The Riddle My Boss Presented

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the mass of the snakes is always preserved, so they cannot both dissapear. The real life image seems to challenge the mathematical notion of "eating at the same speed": Why can't we picture two snakes completely eat each other up at the same speed? This is where the subtle deception takes place: Suppose that each snakes weighs 10 kilograms and eats 1 kilogram per minute. Then each snake could eat the other one in 10 minutes. Lets see what happens: after 5 minutes, snake A has eaten 5 kilograms of snake B, so it has gained 5 kilogram. However, it has also lost 5 kilograms which were eaten up by snake B. So the weight of snake A is still 10 kilograms; similarly the weight of snake B is still 10 kilograms. So, instead of having half the job done, they are still at the beginning. Five minutes later, they still have 10 more kilograms to eat, and so on: they have to go on forever, they can never finish up.

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