In a huge room lives a very hungry ant. The room is 4 meters wide, 4 meters high and 10 meters long. The ant is on one of the 4x4-meter walls, right in the middle (2 meters from each of the 4x10-meter walls), and 1 meter from the ceiling. Its food is on the opposite wall, also in the middle, but 1 meter from the floor. The poor ant is very hungry, and won't be able to walk more than 13.99 meters without dropping dead. Can it survive? (The ant cannot fly, jump etc.)

Take the room and "unfold" it to make 3D plan,

draw a line from the start position to the end position, this will by your hypotenuse. next draw a line horizontally from the destination point parallel with what was the floor. then draw a line vertically from your start point to intersect your horizontal line.

You should have a right angle triangle.

carry out pythagoras theorum on the triangle.
the "Horiz" line is 14 metres long, the "Vert" line is 2 metres long therefore the hypotenuse is 14.142 metres.

In my opinion, the ant cannot walk to it's destination without slipping off this mortal coil.

ADDED AFTER

however if you calculate it correctly as David Shin did, then the ant will survive

Edited on January 21, 2005, 2:59 pm

Posted by Juggler on 2005-01-21 14:57:38