3 ms·
40 feet?
by byoung2 15y ago
40 feet?
- mschireson 15y agoNicely done. Take the diagonal!
- jonnycat 15y agoYou're going to have to explain your math here, because I don't believe the diagonal is going to give you 40 (unless I'm visualizing the problem incorrectly). In fact, I believe the diagonal is longer than the naive solution.
- mschireson 15y agoIt depends which diagonal. I'll explain in more detail later but don't want to completely spoil it :) Stay tuned!
- byoung2 15y agoThe "obvious" solution is down 11 feet to the floor, 30 feet across the floor, and 1 foot up to the honey, for a total of 42 feet. Instead picture the room "unfolded" into a series of squares and rectangles and laid flat. Then use the pythagorean theorem to find the length of the diagonal that connects the ant and the honey while staying on a surface the whole way. You'll get (6+12+6)^2 + (1+30+1)^2 = c^2 or c = 40.
- akavi 15y agoI'm pretty sure this is the correct answer too. Visualization tip: Consider the possible nets of the rectangular prism that makes up the room, and find what the shortest path on one of them would look like.
- mschireson 15y agoIts the best I've found. Another way of thinking about the visualization is to make a model of the surface that can fold up to form it. The shortest path (which will be a diagonal if not a straight line) on any of those is the answer.
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