A traveller starts out from the Earth's equator, heading exactly northeast. Undeterred by mountains, oceans and political boundaries, he continues on a northeasterly heading until he can go no further.
Where does he end up?
How far did he go?
How many times did he circumnavigate the earth? (For these purposes, this means travel through 360 degrees of longitude.)
(In reply to
re(3): re Solution by Cheradenine)
Yeah, I don't really like the 'official' answer...
Using Cartesian geometry on a spherical surface seems to be asking for trouble.
I can't offer an alternative, but has someone attempted solving this in spherical coordinate system (r,theta, thi) ? Given a spherical surface with center at origin, any movement in theta is north-south and thi would be east-west.
re(4): re Solution
