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 solution by Charlie)

Surely this doesn't take into account the 1 mile the boat has to travel back to the campsite (the very same mile the hat travels) OVER AND ABOVE the ten minutes travel time...??

Posted by Vinodhan Selvarajalu on 2003-05-07 21:12:18