A rubber band is 1 meter long. An ant starts at one end, crawling at 1 millimeter per second. At the end of each second, the rubber band is instantaneously stretched by an additional meter. (So, at the end of the nth second, the rubber band becomes n+1 meters long.)

Does the ant ever reach the far end of the band? If so, when?

(In reply to The backward ant by TomM)

I took a computational approach and the equation is still making progress at 100000, but as a percentage it is becoming smaller. If you graph it the line does not plateau. I suspect it will reach the end, but it will take an infinitely long time to reach it.

Posted by Brad Hack on 2002-10-07 06:57:39