Lol I kept saying it was but nobody believed me

3(x + 100,000) = 10x + 1

3x + 300,000 = 10x + 1

299999 = 7x

x = 299999/7

get the calculator out

x = 42857

For anyone who wanted to know how to do it.

Exactly, thanks for that Adam (saved me doing it)

Still to be solved:

Old Boniface he took his cheer,
Then he bored a hole through a solid sphere,
Clear through the center, straight and strong,
And the hole was just six inches long.
Now tell me, when the end was gained,
What volume in the sphere remained?
Sounds like I haven't told enough,
But I have, and the answer isn't tough

(it really isn't as difficult as it seems - trust me )

And another easy one to keep things going:

A square medieval castle on a square island is under siege. All around the castle there is a square moat 10 meters wide. Due to a regrettable miscalculation the raiders have brought footbridges, which are only 9.5 meters long. The invaders cannot abandon their campaign and return empty-handed.
How can the assailants resolve their predicament?

Edit: Just to clarify ... there is sufficient land around the castle so you don't need to worry about having to lean a footbridge against a wall.

Edited at 17:09 Sun 03/04/11 (BST)

Do the bridges have sides buddy?

Unfortunately, Health and Safety Issues in those days were appalling and so no they don't. In fact to call them footbridges is somewhat of an overstatement by today's standards and are little more than surprisingly robust planks.

So is it as simple as the put a plank across the corner, then another one from that plank to the shore?

It most certainly is as simple as that ... I keep telling everyone they are easy lol

Havnt done your sphere one yet though. I know I'm missing something again!

I'm sure you'll see it soon and it will be 'slap forehead' time again.

I went on a treasure hunt, following my map and spade in hand I trek through the summer heat looking for 'x' in relation to my map. Unfortunately it's hard to read and the worn out map has made finding 'x' harder.

It's been 2 days now, and i'm running out of water. the desert dust has made map reading even worse and the x is barely visible, but I must go on.

I must dig on 'X' but where?

Interesting, will have to give it some thought tomorrow if I can get rid of this banging headache

Either this headache is dulling the senses or that problem has lost something in the translation lol but I can't make any head nor sense of it at the moment.

i know how to do the sphere one, havnt put pen to paper and done the book work yet to get the answer though. first attempt at it i was trying to evaluate a surface integral by either Stokes' Theorem or the Divergence Theorem so i think i may have gone wrong somewhere...

Wow, massive over complications. No wonder you have been having trouble with that one. I must say that mathematicians do tend to take the hard route to solve this but this is the first time I've seen that approach. Remember, this is more of a lateral thinking problem than a pure maths problem and the small amount of maths involved are secondary school level that most people should be able to solve.

i was trying to work out the volumes of the removed end caps lol.

Just to say there is literally no thinking you have to do on this. Just what text is in the post.

I would have just used the formula for an end cap .....

is 113.1 close enough for sphere volume?

Hmmm, finally got rid of the headache but still a bit confused on this. However, I'll tell you where my first thoughts are ....

Yep I would have accepted 113 ... well done

by the way, could you expand on the reasoning in the spoiler seeing as I did say there was a hole and your solution obviously doesn't have a hole?

Edited at 13:41 Wed 06/04/11 (BST)