TITLE: How Strong is an Egg?
QUESTION [9 upvotes]: You have two identical eggs. Standing in front of a 100 floor building, you wonder what is the maximum number of floors from which the egg can be dropped without breaking it. What is the minimum number of tries needed to find out the solution?

REPLY [3 votes]: The critical strip of eggs is the interval $C:=[k,k+1]$ such that, when an egg is dropped from a height $\leq k$ it survives, and when it is dropped from a height $\geq k+1$ it brakes.
The numbers
$$h_r(n)\qquad(r\geq0,\ n\geq0)$$
("allowed length for $r$ eggs and $n$ trials") are defined as follows: If we know that $C$ lies in a certain interval of length $\ell\leq h_r(n)$ we can locate $C$ with $r$ eggs in $n$ trials, but if  we know only that $C$ lies in a certain interval of length $\ell>h_r(n)$ then there is no deterministic algorithm that allows to locate $C$  with $r$ eggs in $n$ trials for sure. Obviously
$$h_0(n)=1\quad(n\geq0)\ ,\qquad h_r(0)=1\quad(r\geq0)\ .$$
The numbers $h_r(n)$ satisfy the recursion
$$h_r(n)=h_{r-1}(n-1)+h_r(n-1)\qquad(r\geq1,\ n\geq1)\ .\qquad(*)$$
Proof. Assume $C$ lies in a certain interval $I$ of length $\ell:=h_{r-1}(n-1)+h_r(n-1)$. We may as well assume that the lower end of $I$ is at level zero. Drop the first egg at height $h_{r-1}(n-1)$. If it brakes then $C$ is contained in the interval $[0,h_{r-1}(n-1)]$ and can be located with the remaining $r-1$ eggs in $n-1$ trials. If it survives then $C$ is contained in the interval $[h_{r-1}(n-1),\ell]$ of length $h_r(n-1)$ and can be located with the $r$ eggs in $n-1$ trials. This proves $h_r(n)\geq\ell$.
Conversely, assume that we know only that $C$ lies in a certain interval of length $\ell'>\ell$ and that there is an algorithm that locates $C$ with $r$ eggs in $n$ trials. This algorithm would tell us the height $k$ at which we should drop the first egg. If $k>h_{r-1}(n-1)$ and the egg brakes or if $k\leq h_{r-1}(n-1)$ and the egg survives it would be impossible to finish the task, as the remaining interval that contains $C$ is larger than allowed for the remaining resources. It follows that $h_r(n)\leq\ell$.
From $(*)$ we obtain
$$h_1(n)=n+1\ ,\quad h_2(n)={1\over2}(n^2+n+2),\quad h_3(n)={1\over6}(n^3+5n+6)\qquad(n\geq0)\ .$$
As $h_2(13)<100<h_2(14)$ we need at least $14$ trials to locate $C$ (or eliminate $C\subset[0,100]$) in the original setup.