iNTELLIGENCE

The infinity machine - a gedanken experiment

Think of a lamp with a button to turn the lamp on/off. You can switch on the lamp by pressing the button once, and can switch off the lamp by pressing the button a second time.

Now you switch on the lamp and wait for 60 seconds. Then you switch off the lamp and wait for 30 seconds. Another switch-on for 15 seconds, and so on, ad infinitum. Every switch requires half of the time of the switch before.

Let's say the lamp cannot be destroyed by this handling, and it would be also possible to do an infinite number of switch operations -

after 120 seconds, will the lamp (the “infinity machine”) be on or off?

IQ solution