Note that the way that the second wire burns may not be the same as the way that the first wire burns. Thus, the second wire may burn as follows : 2 minutes for the first 1%, 4 minutes for the next 1% and so on. At the end of 10 minutes, only 3% of the wire may have burned. But since the wire takes an hour to burn through, the rest of the 97% of the second wire would burn in the next 50 minutes. I use the term "fixed but unknown" because while the way the two wires burn is not known, the way the two wires burn does not change over the period of time in question.
(Chandrayaan Engine Room) Chandrayaan-12 has run into trouble. The problem is in the engine room, and the initial investigation into the problem has revealed that the positron motor needs to be restarted. This needs to be done exactly 45 minutes after the neutrino drive is turned off. However, the clocks in Chandrayaan are no longer reliable. All you have are two wires. The two wires each take exactly an hour to burn. They don't burn uniformly, however. So, for instance, the first half of the first wire may take 13 minutes to burn and the second half 47 minutes. Is it possible to measure out exactly 45 minutes using the two wires? If so, how?
Update: Mathematically speaking, let the length of the first wire that burns in time t be f1(t). This function is not known. It could be of the form [ f1(t) = k.t ], but it could be quite different as well. You don't need to understand any advanced mathematics to solve the problem, however, and for this reason, we have avoided using mathematical notation for the problem.
