How do you divide 17 apples among 16 people?

Answer 1

Obviously you can't cut an iPhone into sixteen pieces. And obviously throwing one away is a waste, while giving two to one person is unfair. So what I propose is this.

Design a machine which has a small platform, shielded from view, and will, with a 50/50 probability based on the decay of radioactive particles, flop the iPhone out of a hole in the left or the right. Make sure it has a hole on top into which an iPhone can be safely dropped.

Build fifteen of these machines. Have one at the top which dumps into two others, which dump respectively into two others each, which in turn dump into two others. At the terminals of these last eight machines have the sixteen people await a result with open hands.

Now, if someone were to drop an iPhone into the top machine and everyone made a point of looking away, observer influence would be negated and the iPhone would be divided into sixteen quantum shadows of itself, superimposed at sixteen different positions in three-dimensional space.

Of course, the iPhone would collide with someone's hand at some point and would be observed, solidifying its state. However, if the observation is made by all sixteen people at the same time, the stable state does in fact leave sixteen complete iPhones, quantum entangled, in everyone's hands.

This done, every partygoer can depart with two apple iPhones in hand. Possible risks, though minor, include reality distortion, cancer, and God's undying wrath, as well as possible legal conflict with Apple Incorporated. Additionally, if science disproves observer-dependent physics the phones will most likely cease to exist. ---- Now, assuming you actually mean apples (and not Apples), simply give one apple to each person and throw the other away, or give it to charity, or keep it for yourself as payment for services rendered in dividing the apples successfully.