Wet Clothes
I foolishly made the mistake of heading out to the corner shop in mid-November without an umbrella, and naturally on my return it was raining most heavily. I made haste back to 221B but still I became thoroughly drenched. To compound my suffering, Mrs. Hudson was passing through the hallway just as I got back and was not impressed.
“Now, Mr. Watson,” she said. “I’ve just cleaned the carpet and I won’t have you dripping all over it.”
“What would you have me do instead, Mrs. Hudson?” I asked, wringing my hands as I attempted to wring out my clothes.
“I’ll put down some newspaper,” she declared. “Just wait there, I won’t be a moment.”
While all this was going on Holmes overheard our conversation and came down to investigate.
“You’re looking rather wet, old chap,” he said helpfully.
I sighed. “Yes, I think my clothes were about 99 per cent water after going through that downpour,” I told him. “And now, having wrung them out for ten minutes on the doorstep, I think they’re now about 98 per cent water.”
“There’s an interesting question in this,” said Holmes. “Let us say that your clothes weighed 20 ounces when you first got here, with 99 per cent of that weight being water. If you’ve now wrung them out so that only 98 per cent of their weight is water, then how much do they weigh now?”