Wine and mice

The Workings:

Today’s divertimento offers a curious and intoxicating Russian roulette for mice. It touches on a tricky subject: the use of animals for experiments. Curiously enough, the famous Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan found this practice very unpleasant. As a high school student in Madras, he had to take a physiology course that involved dissecting animals – in some cases live ones – and attending the ritual butchery, studying the detailed catalogues of bloody guts and slimy organs, was not exactly to the liking of a strict vegetarian like Ramanujan, so much that it is hard to imagine a more repellent teaching for him. On one occasion, he was asked about the details of the digestive system. He promptly returned the examination paper having written just a couple of lines in reply, accompanied by the following comment: “Please sir, excuse my reply, but it is the indigestible result that the chapter on digestion has given me”. Ramanujan failed the physiology subject; by a long way, moreover, for his final mark was humiliatingly close to 0.

The Fun:

We have collected 1000 bottles of wine to celebrate a party. The day before the event, we receive a warning that one of the bottles is poisoned. It is a slow-acting poison, which kills the person who ingests it within 24 hours.

We have 10 laboratory mice, which we assume can be given any amount of wine.

Can we identify the exact poisoned bottle?

 

 

 

 

Solution:

We encourage the readers to try to solve the divertimento for themselves. Whether you succeed or not, you can always consult the solution in this link.