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        riddles >> medium >> Pool Ant
        
(Message started by: kakadu007 on Apr 23^rd, 2007, 3:02pm)

Title: Pool Ant
Post by kakadu007 on Apr 23^rd, 2007, 3:02pm

you have a pool 10 meters on 3 meters and 2 meter deep (no water) an ant sits on the border up in the middle of the 3 and has to get to the other side in the middle from the 3 and the 2.

It will take the ant 13 meters to do that, going down to the bottom (2mr) walking to the other side (10mr) and going half up (1mr) total is 13...

THERE IS A SHORTER WAY, can ou find it??

Title: Re: riddle i need urgently an answer.....
Post by Icarus on Apr 23^rd, 2007, 5:31pm

Yes. The ant is a drone with wings. It flies straight to the other point with distance http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wwu/YaBBImages/symbols/surd.gif101 meters.

If his wings are tired, however, he can always take the 12.98 meter path, and save himself a couple centimeters.

One way to see your original path is to slit the four edges of the pool, and lay its sides down flat. This doesn't change the length of any path that doesn't travel across any of the slit edges. Your 13 meter path is the straight line connecting the starting and ending points after this transformation, and as such is shorter than any of the other unslit paths.

Now, the question you need to ask is: are there other ways of slitting the pool so that I can lay it down flat?

Title: Re: Pool Ant
Post by jollytall on Apr 24^th, 2007, 12:13am

Make sure you do not try to be double clever, since then you would loose a couple of centimeters (13.0384) or be simple (single) clever but the wrong way loosing even more (13.7295).