Taijitu
Forum Meta => Archive => General Discussion Archive => Topic started by: Funkadelia on September 20, 2012, 01:31:15 PM
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I just got out of my math class, and we were given a problem that really, really scrambles my brain, so here it is:
Henry broke camp early and motored upriver to his favorite fishing hole. A mile upstream his hat flipped overboard, but he did not notice for another 5 minutes. As soon as he realized what happened, Henry turned around and gave chase. He came upon his hat just as it went past his camp. Assuming Henry motored at full throttle the whole time, how fast is the river flowing?
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I'm bad at math but tbh I don't see how you can consider speed when there's nothing to relate time and distance during the same path
(mile)+(5min)=total path
In the hypothesis that the boat does a mile every 5min
if a boat goes 12 miles an hour, does 1 mile every 5min, therefore the river does a third of that speed because the river drove the hat a mile while the boat drove 3 miles to reach the same point?. I don't think you have enough data to answer this question, but as I said, I'm pretty bad at math.
Either way, the river drove the hat a mile, the boat drove a mile + (5min x2).
and that's not even considering that the boat is driving upstream and therefore faster downstream...
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I'm also thinking there is not enough information to answer it, and you apparently are in fact meant to conisider that upstream is slower than downstream.
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yeah but even then you can't just add some numbers and get a proper result, different boats react differently due to friction to those circumstances therefore if you want to make it complicated you need way more variables. Either way, you need to know either what time it took him to get his hat back, or starting time and arrival time, or what distance he has driven upstream for 5min.
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I love math puzzles :DDDDDDDD but this is not a very interesting one. Admittedly, I am somewhat disappointed.
yeah but even then you can't just add some numbers and get a proper result, different boats react differently due to friction to those circumstances therefore if you want to make it complicated you need way more variables.
Generally these puzzles aren't meant to be complicated. The details are just for flavor.
The answer should be independent of the boat's speed or anything else not given in the problem (should be 6mph, I think?).