1. A monk climbs a mountain. He starts at 8AM and reaches the summit at noon.

He spends the night on the summit. The next morning, he leaves the summit at
8AM and descends by the same route that he used the day before, reaching the
bottom at noon. Prove that there is a time between 8AM and noon at which the
monk was at exactly the same spot on the mountain on both days.
Solution.
The same day that the monk goes up the mountain, have another monk at the top of
the mountain going down the same way that the first monk would the second day. They
will meet. Alternately: let x1(t) denote the position of the monk going up on the first day,
and let x2(t) denote the position of the monk going down on the second day. Let t = 0
denote 8AM and t = 1 denote noon. Observe that x2(0)−x1(0) > 0 and x2(1)−x1(1) < 0.
Therefore by the Intermediate Value theorem, for some T in [0, 1], x2(T)−x1(T) = 0 ⇒
x2(T) = x1(T).

2. You are in the downstairs lobby of a house. There are three switches, all in the
"off' position. Upstairs, there is a room with a light bulb that is turned off. One and
only one of the three switches controls the bulb. You want to discover which
switch controls the bulb, but you are only allowed to go upstairs once. How do
you do it? (No fancy strings, telescopes, etc. allowed. You cannot see the
upstairs room from downstairs. The light bulb is a standard lOO-watt bulb.)
Solution.
Throw Switch #1 to the "ON" position, and leave it in that position for a couple of
minutes. Then set Switch #1 back to the "OFF" position and quickly throw Switch #2 to
the "ON" position. Immediately go upstairs and observe the bulb. If the light is on,
Switch #2 controls the light because it is the only switch in the "ON" position. If the light
is off then Switch #2 does not control the bulb. That being the case, feel the bulb. If the
bulb is very warm to the touch, Switch #1 turned it on previously, so it (Switch #1)
controls the bulb. But if the light is off, and it is cool to the touch, then neither Switch #1
nor Switch #2 turned the light on, so the light must be controlled by Switch #3.
3. The simplest answer is “At the north pole.” Because the earth is a sphere, not a
plane, cartesian directions like north, south and east, stop making sense as you get
close to the poles, where the lines of longitude converge.

However, there is actually an infinite number of answers! Similar to how you ‘cheat’
cardinal direction at the north pole, at the south pole you can cheat by going all the way
around the world, if your house is 1+(1/pi) miles north of the south pole, because when
you head east, the circumference of the earth at that lattitude is exactly one mile. The
infinite solutions exist because you do not have tt do this at any particular longitude, but
also because you can make a similar arrangement so that you circle the earth two,
three, or any numer of times before heading north again.