Question: In a Lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles its size. It takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how many days would it take the patch to cover half of the lake?

A. 36
B. 2⁴ *3
C. 24
D. 38
E. 47

Answer: E

Approach Solution (1):
The correct answer is 47 days. Since the lily pads double every day, if the pond is half-full after 47 days, then it doubles and gets filled the very next day, the 48th.
Correct option: E

Approach Solution (2):
In this riddle, the one who is trying to solve must read between the lines carefully. It is just given in simple words and can find the answer for this riddle easily. Here, the patch doubles in size every day and so on the 47th day the patch will be half the size it is on the 48th day.
Correct option: E

Approach Solution (3):
With all the talk of doubling and halves, your brain jumps to the conclusion that to solve the problem of when the lily patch covers half the lake, all you have to do is divide the number of days it took to fill the lake (48) in half. It's understandable but wrong.
The problem says that the patch DOUBLES in size every day, which means that on any day, the lily patch was half the size the day before. So if the patch reaches the entire size of the lake on the 48th day, it means the lily pad was half the size of the lake on day 47.
Correct option: E

“In a Lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles its size. It takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how many days would it take the patch to cover half of the lake?”- is a topic of the GMAT Quantitative reasoning section of GMAT. This question has been taken from the book “GMAT Official Guide Quantitative Review”. To solve GMAT Problem Solving questions a student must have knowledge about a good amount of qualitative skills. The GMAT Quant topic in the problem-solving part requires calculative mathematical problems that should be solved with proper mathematical knowledge.

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