Brain teaser question in interview

Had the most ridiculous brain teaser question earlier in an interview. Still can’t figure out the answer for the life of me. Anyone have any ideas:

You have 20 light bulbs. When dropped, each light bulb breaks at a different height. What will you do to determine the height each light bulb breaks at without breaking any of the bulbs?

I panicked and said it was impossible to determine without breaking any but I suspect that was not the answer the interviewers were looking for

4 Comments
 

Not sure if this is right, but if the light bulbs themselves are different lengths, they would break at different heights (assuming they break at impact). This is because if the ceiling is x ft above the floor and the lightbulbs are all connected to the ceiling, the larger length lightbulbs would protrude farther from the ceiling and have a lesser fall distance to impact. For example a 20 cm lightbulb would break quicker than a 15 cm lightbulb. So you would measure the distance to fall of each light bulb.

 

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