Question : There are one thousand bottles of wine. Only one of these bottles is contaminated with a deadly poison. The poison is so potent that even a single drop of contaminated wine can cause death. A scientist wants to find the contaminated bottle in 10 days. He has several rats at his disposal. The poison takes exactly 10 days to show its effect which is death. The scientist wants to use minimum number of rats for this business. How should he proceed? What is the minimum number rats that he has to use? Prove that this indeed is minimum.
Question variation : Assume that one drop of the contaminated wine causes death in 10 days and any quantity greater than or equal to two drops hastens the death by 5 days. Now what is the minimum number of rats that have to be used?
Answer : Sorry guys, I don’t know the anwer. If you know the solution, please post it as comment. I can update this.