This is Kelsey from Infinite Series.
And this is Matt from space time.
Hey, Vanessa.
Hey, mate.
First question for you--
what walks on four legs in the morning,
two legs in the afternoon, three legs in the evening,
and no legs at night?
I think I've heard this.
I think back in the day, the gender insensitive answer
was man.
It's like a human?
Because you, like, crawl, and then you walk, and then
there's a cane, and then you die.
Mhm.
That's a classic riddle.
And it's from ancient Greece.
Yeah.
I find it really addressing the first recorded instance
we have of this riddle is from the second century.
Thousands of years later, we now ask these types
of questions in job interviews.
Today, we're getting job ready.
So this is like a job interview.
Yeah.
I want you to be job ready.
There was this one guy called William Shockley, Jr.,
who in the '50s and '60s developed a transistor
and was trying to patent it.
And he's seen as one of the first people
to kind of start Silicon Valley.
And he asked people brainteasers and riddles and things
in job interviews.
What am I interviewing for here?
This is the BrainCraft graduation edition.
This is terrifying all of a sudden.
Next question-- how many golf balls can fit in a school bus?
Wait, let me translate that for you.
How many cricket balls can you fit inside a Holden Commodore
Ute.
A what?
That's true.
Like, maybe, several thousand?
So how many square feet is this school bus.
It's like--
I'm trying to count them one by one.
It's like that jelly bean game, except it's in my head.
What, probably 70 feet long?
And, like--
How many meters is that?
--10 feet by 10 feet?
Like, maybe 30 across.
And maybe--
--three meters tall.
Is that too tall.
Let's do two.
Two.
Because you can just barely-- you're gonna hit your head,
right?
Maybe you'd fit 20 up, which gives you 600.
What's the diameter of a golf ball?
I think more like several thousand, yeah.
In the cab.
Yeah.
Of a Holden Commodore Ute.
I think so.
OK.
So that means you could fit 10 million--
Seems like too many.
--golf balls.
That does seem like too many.
I was thinking more like a couple of 100,000.
Well, I think what I'm interested in is
just the way that you have reached this conclusion.
It doesn't really matter how many you can fit in a Ute
unless you're trying to break a world record or something?
It comes up sometimes, but not that often.
Not very often.
It's not something that you need to know on a daily basis.
But what I'm interested in is how you're working it up.
So kind of the same way we do almost all of astronomy
is we just guess.
Next question for you--
why are manhole covers round?
I want to be [INAUDIBLE].
But when you say womanhole covers,
it doesn't have the same ring to it.
'Cause people are roughly circular in that dimension?
Mhm.
But they could also be square, and we could still
fit through them.
I think there's some advantages.
One is that it doesn't matter which way you put it in.
It just goes in.
I think that's the answer.
Yeah, but if they were square, then there would be, like,
these additional corner parts--
Mhm.
--where your body would not go through.
And then it would just be, like, more space taken out
of the ground.
You want to minimize--
this is the mathematician's perspective.
You want to minimize the amount of space
you have to take out of the ground.
And a circle is kind of the closest approximation.
An oval would probably be better,
but to a human body from that dimension.
Mhm.
But it's a brainteaser, so that's probably
not the right answer.
It's the only shape that you could have in a road-- like,
on a plane--
that wouldn't fall through itself.
Oh.
Like, for, I suppose, the safety of the person
walking up a ladder.
This is above them.
Or for the safety of the pedestrian walking
along the street.
If you had a square, you could orientate it--
Yeah, then you could turn it and you could-- yeah
How many times a day does a clock's hands overlap?
Oh.
12?
11?
Probably-- is it 23?
It's really close.
Yeah, 24?
No?
Not quite.
23?
Not quite.
But you're on the right track.
Is it 22?
Mhm.
OK.
Yeah, because it's 11 every 12.
And therefore, it's 22 every 24.
Well, it's almost once an hour.
Except from 10:55 to 12 o'clock, they don't overlap.
So you kind of miss the 11th hour.
Because it overlaps at 1:05, and then 2:10, and then 3:15.
And so it's pushing forward.
And so you lose one hour every 12.
Yeah.
Final question for you--
how much should someone charge to wash
all of the windows in New York City?
I mean, it would probably take their entire life
to do that, I would guess.
I would-- yeah.
If you worked, like, 40 hours a week,
I don't think you could wash all the windows in your lifetime,
would be my guess.
I would just say all the money.
All of the money?
Yeah, all of the money.
Are you getting paid after completion of the task?
Or are you getting paid per window?
I would say per window.
But this sounds like a bunch of billions, I guess.
Really, the answer is how much anyone
wants to charge to wash all the windows in New York City.
It's really up to you to work out how much your time is worth
and--
Yeah, how much is my life worth?
--how much your life is worth.
Set your price.
Well, I didn't really need a job at Silicon Valley, anyway.
I feel like, you know--
You can have stereotypical or typical measures
of intelligence.
Like, you could do an IQ test or you could have
your GPA or whatever it may be.
Except these questions kind of take bits of that,
take things that you know, but apply them to a novel problem.
Yeah.
So it probably makes you more employable in that sense.
You're doing pretty well.
Thank you, Kelsey, for being on BrainCraft.
Thank you, Vanessa, for having me.
We respect and appreciate your time.
Thank you, Matt, for being on BrainCraft.
Thank you, Vanessa.
That's the second time you've been on BrainCraft.
Yep.
And both were really fun.
Weren't they just?
Please have me back.
All the time.
We'll find out.
Alexa, how many golf balls can you fit in a school bus?
She wouldn't know.