17 camels and three boys English short stories


Long ago, an old man and his three sons lived in an abandoned village near a desert. He had 17 camels, the main source of income. He used to rent camels to transport in the desert. One day he died. He left a will and left his belongings to his three sons.

After the funeral and other duties ended, the three sons read the will. While their father divided all belongings into three equal parts, he divided the 17 camels differently. They are not evenly distributed among the three, since 17 is an odd number and a prime number that cannot be divided.

17 camels and three boys English short stories

The old man said that the oldest boy would own half of the 17 camels, the middle one a third of the 17 camels, and the youngest would get his ninth part of the camels!

Everyone was astonished to read the will and asked each other how to divide the 17 camels, as stated in the will. It is not possible to divide 17 camels and give half of the 17 camels to the oldest. It is also not possible to divide the camels for the other two boys.

For several days they devised ways to distribute the camels as stated in the will, but no one could find the answer.

Eventually they brought the matter to the wise man in their village. The wise man heard the problem and immediately found a solution. He asked if they would bring him all 17 camels.

The boys brought the camels to the wise men. The wise man added a camel he owned and made the total number of camels 18.

Now he asked the first boy to read the will. According to the will, the eldest son received half of the camels, which now count to 18/2 = 9 camels! The oldest received 9 camels.

The remaining camels were 9.

The wise man asked the second son to read the will. He dedicated 1/3 of the total camels.

That was 18/3 = 6 camels. The second boy had 6 camels.

Total number of camels divided by the older boys - 9 + 6 = 15 camels.

The third boy read his share of camels: 1/9 of the total number of camels - 18/9 = 2 camels.

The youngest received 2 camels.

There were a total of 9 + 6 + 2 camels shared by the brothers, up to 17 camels.

Now the camel added by the wise is taken back.

The wise man cleverly solved this problem with his intelligence.

Intelligence is nothing more than finding a common basis for solving a problem. In short, every problem has a solution.