Question

a puzzle
we have to place 30 birds on 5 trees such that no tree is left vacant and number of birds on each tree is odd ???
our maths teacher asked this , .....

Answer 1

I think its not possible :(

Answer 2

Think of it this way. You have to have 5 odd numbers. By definition, an odd plus an odd is even, and an odd plus an even is odd. If you work that through, you will see that at face value the problem is impossible to satisfy.

So, now you work through the unusual answers. Have you been doing number studies in other than base 10 lately? If you have an odd base, say 7, then the question becomes (in base 10): put 21 birds on 5 trees. That is certainly doable.

Then you play with the semantics. It would certainly be odd to have half a bird in a tree. That's a bit gruesome though.

Last in my quick brainstorm would be to ask...are there any birds currently in the trees and can you include them in the final count?