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英语四级听力美文第85篇:The Story of Sissa
There was once a victim of overwhelming numbers called King Shirham of India, who, according to the old legend, wanted to reward his grand Prime Minister Sissa for inventing andpresenting to him the game of chess.
The desire of the clever minister seemed very modest.
“Majesty,” he said kneeling in front of the king, “give me a grain of wheat to put on the firstsquare of this chessboard, and two grains to put on the second square, and four grains to puton the third.
And so, oh King, doubling the number for each succeeding square, give me enough grains tocover all 64 square of the board.”
“You do not ask for much, oh my faithful servant,” exclaimed the king, secretly enjoying thethought that his liberal proposal of a gift to the inventor would not cost him much of histreasure.
“Your wish will certainly be granted.”
And he ordered a bag of wheat to be brought to the throne.
But when the counting began, it was found that the bag was emptied before the twentiethsquare was accounted for.
More bags of wheat were brought before the king but the number of grains needed for eachsucceeding square
increased so rapidly that it soon became clear that with all the crop of Indian the king could notfulfill his promise to Sissa.
To do so would have required 18，446，744，073，709，551，615 grains!
Assuming that a bushel of wheat contains about 5 million grains, one would need some 4×1012 bushels to satisfy the demand of Sissa.
Since the world production of wheat averages about 2×109 bushels a year, the amountrequested by the minister was that of the world's wheat production for the period of some twothousand years!
Thus King Shirham found himself deep in debt to his minister and had either to face theincessant flow of the latter's demands, or to cut his head off.
We suspect that he chose the latter alternative.
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