Bob is having a nice camping/fishing trip along a river. He leaves his campsite early in the morning, and gets on his boat, heading full throttle upstream.

After going for exactly one mile, his hat flips off of his head, and starts floating downstream. Bob doesn't realize that his hat has fallen off for five minutes, but then he notices that it's missing, and turns full throttle downstream.

He finally catches the hat at exactly the same spot as he camped that morning. The question is, how fast was the water traveling?

(Assume that he travels the same speed the entire time and that there is no turn around time.)

(In reply to Water speed???? re: General Shortcut Formula by Michael Cottle)

Michael, I think you are right that the question is unsolvable if the absolute boat speed takes into account the river speed (Which it should).

I wrote the time/speed/distance formula out and end up with one equation and two unknowns (Boat speed + river speed)

Only if the absolute boat speed is a constant, independent of the up/down stream travelling, you can solve it.

Posted by Hugo on 2004-12-28 18:24:12