Google has a bizarre interview question about a blender that 'no one gets right'
No matter how many times you’ve sat through them, job interviews always bring out a level of stress or nerves.
From biting your nails over the thought of being asked what your worst quality is or having nightmares over ‘a time you faced a challenge in the workplace’, the standard questions are bad enough.
But that’s not even touching on the more obscure thing interviewers seem to love throwing at you without warning. Or, the sneaky tricks they might use without you even knowing.
And it seems to be some of the bigger companies up to these antics with Google having a bizarre interview question about a blender that ‘no one gets right’.
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You might actually remember it featuring in 2013’s The Internship with Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn.
Being interviewed for the tech company in the film, they get asked: “You're shrunken down to the size of a nickel and dropped into a blender, what do you do?"
But while those two got that job, most people absolutely bomb it in real life.
Google started using brainteasers like this one to help them weed out candidates because obviously, so many people are applying there each year.
And making it even harder, not everyone can agree on what really is the correct answer to how you would escape the blender before it gets switched on.
The simple answer
Believe it or not, one answer to this question is: just jump.
While you would have a much smaller muscle mass, you'd also weigh a hell of a lot less - the two effectively cancelling each other out to allow you to jump to roughly the same height as you would be able to at full size.
Professor Gregory Sutton told MailOnline to think about it like this: "One grasshopper can jump about a metre high.
"Two grasshoppers holding hands - twice as much mass, twice as much muscle - can jump a metre high.
"A million grasshoppers holding hands - a million times as much mass, a million times as much muscle - can jump a metre high."
Why this isn't actually correct
Unfortunately, because your legs would be a lot smaller, they wouldn't have as much time to extend as you jumped, transferring less energy to the ground.
Prof Sutton reckons a coin-sized human could only jump about 10cm-15cm - nowhere near high enough to escape that pesky blender.
So how could you actually get out?
Prof Sutton says: “If I were shrunk down and put in a blender, I'd use a small rubber band to fling myself out.
“The catapult system would work great at that size because your strength-to-mass ratio is very beneficial even if your jumping mechanisms don't work so well.”
While expert on the mechanics of motion Professor Jim Usherwood said: “If I could wind up a spring over a suitable time - about 0.1 seconds - and then release it, I could ping myself out of the blender like a flea.”
So, scientifically, as long as you have a rubber band or a spring in that blender you're fine. If not, it's curtains.
Gayle McDowell, a former Google software engineer, has said that in recent years Google has moved away from these kind of brain teasers.
She told IFL Science in 2018: "If an interview were to ask a candidate a brain teaser, despite the policy, the hiring committee would likely disregard the interviewer's feedback and send a note back telling the interviewer not to ask such silly questions."
Jess Battison