Solution: Fuses

• Burn both ends of one fuse, and one end of the other.
• When the first fuse is done burning thirty minutes have elapsed.
• At this point, light the other end of the remaining fuse.
• It will take fifteen minutes longer to burn up.

One of the Car Talk puzzlers was how to measure 1 minute (or any amount of time) with the same fuses. Their solution was to use one fuse, attached to the lighter itself, to make a pendulum, and use the other fuse to measure time, i.e. how many pendulum swings in 15 minutes?

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