Tenalirama: Man who bring kingdom to its knees with rice and chessboard !

Witty Wednesday

What is interesting fact that you can come up with seemingly mundane everyday rice and game of strategy, chess. 

Let me tell you this in a story. The story of a man who bring whole kingdom down on its knees, single handedly with these two things. This is one of the famous story of TenaliRama. I was watching one TV serial the other day named “TenaliRama". TenaliRama was the real person who was famous for his wits and who is protagonist in this serial.

"Tenali Ramakrishna who was known as Vikatakavi (clown jester poet), was a Telugu poet who hailed from the present-day Andhra Pradesh region, generally known for his wit and humor. He was one of the Ashtadiggajas or the eight poets at the court of Krishnadevaraya, the Vijayanagar emperor. (1509–1530).

Tenali Ramakrishna composed works on Hinduism. Tenali Ramakrishna was also a great scholar of several languages that included Marathi, Tamil, and Kannada."- Wikipedia

As the story goes, once upon a time when there was a situation of war between the king Krishnadevaraya and his enemy. TenaliRama went to the enemy and ask for truce. Now, the enemy was arrogant enough to refuse the proposal of TenaliRama. Though, he told TenaliRama that he was happy from him for his wisdom and presence of mind. He asked TenaliRama to make a wish. TenaliRama wittingly requested for, rice and chess board.

To which enemy laughingly ordered the requested items. Now, TenaliRama requested the king to give him the total number of grain of rice, which will be on chess board, with the condition that, each next consecutive cell of chess board, should contain twice as many number of grains, as that of the previous cell of  the chess board. For example -

First Cell will contain 1 Grain of Rice.

Second Cell will contain 1x2 = 2 Grain of Rice.

Third Cell will contain 2x2 = 4 Grain of Rice.

Fourth Cell will contain 4x2 = 8 Grain of Rice and so on...

Can you calculate what will be the?

1. Number of Rice in last cell of chess board.

2. Total Number of Rice on chess board.

How much is this amount of Rice?

Let see how TenaliRama from his wits made the enemy to accept his defeat from this.

The answer is in the condition, of twice the previous cell. Thus, mathematically the series will be 1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,512,1024.... This kind of series is called exponential series. As it can be rewritten as 2^0, 2^1, 2^2, 2^3... etc. 

If you notice in only 11th cell, the number of rice reaches to more than thousand and it will grow twice from there on. The chess board as 8x8 = 64 cells.

As story goes, by 13^th cell, the whole bowl of rice was on chess board, 14^th cell, it is two bowls, 15^th cell 4 bowls. Now the enemy started to see the implications. 

By 21^st cell, the quantity became 1 Sack, of that time. 22^nd cell, two sacks of rice. By the time of half chess board, whole kingdom's rice was on the chessboard. Thus, enemy accepted his defeat.

So, if we keep on progressing technically on paper, how much rice would have been required?

The last cell will contain 2^63 number grain of Rice, which is equivalent to mind boggling 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 or more than 9 quintillion. Do you know the total number of grains on chessboard will be (1+2+4+8+16+32+...? +9,223,372,036,854,775,807) or 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 or 18 quintillion.

According to approximate calculation,

A single long grain of rice weighs an average of 0.029 grams.

Thus, total weight of rice would be = .029 * 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 = 534955578137576996.835 Grams = 534955578137576.996835 Kgs = 5349555781375.76996835 Sacks of Rice!

This will be around 703 Sacks per person in the whole world for current population at 7.6 billion! If a person eats even 1kg rice per day that would account for 192 years of food for whole population! No wonder enemy accept his defeat instead of honoring TenaliRama wish!

PS: How do you like this series, let us know in the comment section below.

 FootNote

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