Hey there, my friend!
Welcome back to another fun and simple brain teaser that will give your mind a nice little workout today.
Look at these cute animals sitting on the scales together!
We have a smart dog wearing glasses, a lovely black cat, and a tiny little mouse.
At first glance, it might look like a tricky algebra problem from school, but don’t worry at all.
You do not need to be a math genius or spend hours calculating to figure this out.
In fact, there is a super easy trick to solve it in just a few simple steps.
Let’s look at the clues given in the pictures one by one.
In the first picture, we see the dog and the cat standing together on the scale.
Together, the dog and the cat weigh exactly 8.84 kilograms.
In the second picture, the dog steps on the scale with the tiny mouse.
The scale tells us that the dog and the mouse weigh 5.27 kilograms combined.
In the third picture, the cat and the mouse decide to weigh themselves together without the dog.
Their combined weight comes out to 3.65 kilograms.
Now, look at the very last picture at the bottom right.
The dog, the cat, and the mouse are all standing on the scale together at the same time.
Our main goal is to find out the total weight of all three animals together.
Before we reveal the secret, take a quick moment to pause and think about it yourself.
Can you see the clever connection between all three pictures?
If you are ready, let’s break it down together step by step!
Notice what happens if we add the weights from the first three scales all together.
On the first scale, we counted one dog and one cat.
On the second scale, we counted one dog and one mouse.
On the third scale, we counted one cat and one mouse.
If we sum up all three scales, we are actually counting every single animal twice!
That means we have two dogs, two cats, and two mice in total.
Let’s do the addition together now.
We add 8.84 kilograms plus 5.27 kilograms plus 3.65 kilograms.
8.84 plus 5.27 equals 14.11 kilograms.
Then, 14.11 plus 3.65 gives us a grand total of 17.76 kilograms.
Remember, this total of 17.76 kilograms is the weight of TWO dogs, TWO cats, and TWO mice combined.
Since we only want to find the weight of ONE dog, ONE cat, and ONE mouse, what should we do next?
That’s right, we simply divide the total sum by two!
So, we take 17.76 kilograms and divide it by 2.
17.76 divided by 2 equals exactly 8.88 kilograms.
And there you have it!
The total weight of the dog, the cat, and the mouse together is exactly 8.88 kilograms.
Wasn’t that surprisingly easy and fun once you saw the trick?
Great job on solving today’s puzzle, and keep exercising your wonderful brain!
