Suppose that the swift Achilles is having a race with a tortoise. Since the tortoise is much slower, she gets a head start. When the tortoise has reached a given point a, Achilles starts. But by the time Achilles reaches a, the tortoise has already moved beyond point a, to point b. And by the time Achilles reaches b the tortoise has already moved a little bit farther along, to point c. Since this process goes on indefinitely, Achilles can never catch up with the tortoise.

How can this be?

Taken from - http://members.aol.com/kiekeben/zeno.html

Suppose that the swift Achilles is having a race with a tortoise. Since the tortoise is much slower, she gets a head start.

thats using (presumably) the max speed of both, but if achilles isn't travelling at his maximum speed and is in fact only travelling at the speed of the tortoise then this problem could actually work, no where does it state that achilles is running his fastest.

Posted by craig on 2003-02-10 13:20:28