A one armed surgeon with a hand wound needs to operate on three patients. the surgeon only has two gloves. how can he operate on the three patients in turn without risking exchange of fluids? (remember he only has one arm so he only needs to wear one glove at a time.)
Solution
The surgeon places both gloves on his hand (1 and 2). he operates on patient A. he then takes the top glove off (#2), leaving on the bottom glove (#1) and operates on patient B. then he carefully reverses glove #2, so the clean side is on the outside, and he places it on top of glove #1 which is on his hand, and operates on patient C. this problem is kind of dumb because how’s the surgeon going to change the gloves on his hand when he only has one hand. plus no offense, but how often do you come across a one-armed surgeon (i’m sure there are plenty of one-armed doctors, but a surgeon!?!). anyway, i had to make this problem child friendly and changing the story to the above was the only way to do it. consider for a minute what the initial problem was. the surgeon was just a guy, the patients were women, and the glove was… well, i won’t insult your intelligence