Brain-Flexing Balance Problems & Other Puzzles

by Ivan Moscovich

Puzzles in perpetual motion—that’s what these are! Many of these bright brainteasers focus on ingenious, moving mechanisms, including an ancient Greek door-opening apparatus that featured one of the earliest uses of steam. Check out a perpetuum mobile invented by a famous American mathematician and see if you can successfully explain its theoretical principle of operation. A cartoon depicts a classic Lewis Carroll there’s a monkey hanging on a tree holding one end of a rope while a bunch of bananas balance the other end in a state of equilibrium. What will happen if the monkey starts to climb? Other problems deal with gears and levers, while still more shift to number, counting, and calculation challenges.

128 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2006