Professor Flinders is an archeologist who has just completed excavation of a gra

Question

Professor Flinders is an archeologist who has just completed excavation of a grave site that contain artefacts from two different time periods, the time of Emperor Amrati (A), and the time of Emperor Buruth (B). Three crates of artifacts have been shipped to the professor's home university. One crate contains only artifacts from A, one crate only artifacts from B, and one crate contains artifacts from both time periods. The crates are labelled A, B and A/B. However, the professor learns that his students have mischievously changed the labels so that they are now all incorrect. The professor can ask for any of the crates to be opened and an artifact to be unwrapped and shown to him, and he can then determine the time period it comes from. What is the minimum number of artifacts that the professor needs to unwrap to determine the correct labelling of the crates? Carefully describe the strategy for determining the labelling, and argue why this leads to determination of the correct labelling.

Explanation / Answer

The professor only have to open one of the crates

The professor can open the crate marked A/B

He will find A or B in it

If he find artefacts of A category, it means that B is not there in the crate marked B (because students have changed labels such that all are incorrect) and B is also not there in A/B. So, B is in the crate marked A. Then the crate marked A is having A/B. Similarly, if the crate marked A/B is having B, it means that the crate marked B have artefact A and the crate marked A will have artefact A/B

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