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.)

According to the solution, the water was traveling at 6 miles per hour. Therefore, it would take the hat 10 minutes to travel back to the campsite. If Bob continued traveling for five minutes and then turned around, 10 minutes after dropping the hat, he would still be a mile away from the campsite. The problem states he "catches up with" the hat, not retreived it from the bank.

Posted by lesa on 2003-09-05 01:36:21