Saturday, November 11, 2006

Nibble or Nosh?

From Detectograms And Other Puzzles by F. Gregory Hartswick (sweet name):

Once upon a time there was a stretch of road 20 miles long. At each end of this road lived a bicyclist, and at exactly the same instant, they started riding toward each other at a constant speed of 10 mph, continuing until their front wheels touched. At the moment they started, a fly, perched on the front wheel of one of the bikes, started to fly toward the other at a constant speed of 15 mph. He flew until the touched the front wheel and instantly started back, always with the same speed, till he touched the front wheel of the first, and so on, flying back and forth between the wheels until eh was crushed as they met. Each journey naturally was shorter than the one before.

Now: Exactly how far did the fly fly?

Note: Due to both his excessive nerdiness and the excessive regularity with which he checks this blog, Jason Houle is hereby banned from solving the above puzzle, or at least answering it in a comment.

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9 Comments:

At 1:19 PM, November 11, 2006, Blogger hannah said...

i don't know if any of you staches have msn.com as your homepage, but this was one of the main links today:

 
At 7:47 PM, November 11, 2006, Blogger Kelsi said...

I'm gonna have to say the fly flew a total of 20 miles.

I'm not even going to invest hope in that answer being correct.

 
At 11:02 PM, November 11, 2006, Blogger jobble said...

aboutthe smae distance my foot has to travel to kick you in the balls

 
At 9:33 AM, November 12, 2006, Blogger Comrade_Bazarov said...

i think the answer is 15 miles
but i am not sure

 
At 11:08 AM, November 12, 2006, Blogger constant_k said...

Tirth wins it by a nose.


The bikers must travel 1 hour apiece before they hit each other, so the fly has one hour in which to fly at a constant speed of 15 mph.

15m/h * 1h=15 miles

 
At 12:04 PM, November 12, 2006, Blogger Kelsi said...

Damn. My dreams have been shattered.

 
At 12:15 PM, November 12, 2006, Blogger Comrade_Bazarov said...

hurrah for me!

 
At 7:46 PM, November 12, 2006, Blogger Kelsi said...

Here's some unfortunate news. I just checked out Wikipedia and it turns out the "Manly Mustaches" is no longer listed as an external link.

 
At 8:22 PM, November 12, 2006, Blogger constant_k said...

OH NO.

How will we ever get it back on wikipedia? If only there were some way for anyone to edit any article...

 

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