math help: If you have a 3 gallon bucket and a 5 gallon bucket. - Help.com

danielle.grim
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If you have a 3 gallon bucket and a 5 gallon bucket.

How could you use these buckets to get 4 gallons into the 5 gallon bucket?

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nancyargueta_0 offline Verified User (3 years, 9 months) Long Term User Shouts: 0 #
An Unknown Location | 3 years, 9 months ago (19 minutes after post)

If you have a third container or more… you can fill the five gallon bucket and with that fill the three gallon bucket and the rest put into the third container. Once more fill the five gallon bucket and then fill the three gallon bucket with that water and add the water in the third bucket to the water in the five gallon bucket..
so basically in 5B you put 5G of water -3G of water that goes into the 3B and the remaining 2G go into the other bucket…. do that twice and you have 4 gallons…
5G five gallons 5B five gallon bucket

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korwinn offline Verified User (3 years, 11 months) Long Term User Shouts: 1 #
An Undisclosed Location | 3 years, 9 months ago (38 minutes after post)

Lol, Die Hard with Vengence.

So you take the 5 gallon jug and fill it up with water. Pour the water into the 3 gallon jug. You then have 2 gallons of water in the 5 gallon jug. Pour out the 3 gallon jug and pour the 2 gallons of water into the 3 gallon jug. Then you fill up the 5 gallon jug with water and pour the water into the 3 gallon jug, which has 2 gallons of water in it. It fills t the top with water and you have 4 gallons of water in a 5 gallon jug.

Kudos to Bruce Willis and Samuel L.

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Dr. Ralph offline Verified User (4 years, 8 months) Long Term User Shouts: 1 #
An Unknown Location | 3 years, 9 months ago (49 minutes after post)

Fill the 5 gallon bucket 4/5ths of the way full… and then stick your head in it?

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oz.investment offline Unverified User #
An Unknown Location | 3 years, 9 months ago (1 hour, 23 minutes after post)

Easy. Fill up the entire 5gal bucket. Pour this full 5 gal. bucket into the 3 gal bucket. Left over you now have a full 3gal in a 3 gal bucket & a 2 gal left over in the 5gal bucket.
Now Pour out the three gal bucket until empty.
Then Pour the 2 gal from the 5 gal bucket into the now empty 3 gal bucket. You now have 2 gal in a 3 gal bucket (1 gal empty space) and a completely empty 5 gal bucket. Fill the 5 gal bucket and immediately pour and top off the smaller 3 gal bucket (remember it only has space for 1 gal).
That will automatically leave you with 4 gal in the 5 gal bucket.

PS: This riddle has been around for a while, but was made a bit more popular in one of the die hard movies.

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