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A busy bee (Posted on 2002-04-15) Difficulty: 3 of 5
A bicyclist starts his ride home from a point 10 miles away from his house going 5 miles per hour (assume the road is a perfect straight line). At the same time, a bee, initially sitting on his helmet (always wear your helmet!), takes off and flies toward the house at the speed of 15 miles per hour.

Upon reaching the house, the bee turns right around and flies back toward the bicyclist. When it reaches him it turns around again and flies back to the house. The bee keeps doing this until the man finally arrives at the house himself.

What total distance did the bee cover by that point in time?

  Submitted by levik    
Rating: 3.4545 (11 votes)
Solution: (Hide)
The solution to this problem is much easier than most people initially think.

The key here is not to start doing the arithmetics by seeing how long each "segment" of the bee's flight is.

Rather, notice that we know both the bicyclist's speed, and the distance he needs to travel. Dividing 10 miles by 5 miles/hour we calculate that the total time it took for the bicyclist to get home is 2 hours. Now we realize that for those 2 hours, the bee has been going back and forth at a constant speed of 15 miles per hour, meaning that it would have traveled exactly 30 miles.

Comments: ( You must be logged in to post comments.)
  Subject Author Date
answerK Sengupta2007-04-01 15:03:23
Solutionwcaexqdz2004-10-27 12:25:06
SolutionJohnny2004-09-21 10:30:11
re:Jim2004-07-20 11:58:09
Some Thoughtsre: incredibly dizzyJim2004-07-20 11:56:22
SolutionBusy (and dizzy) beeJim2004-07-20 11:54:50
Some Thoughtsvon Neumann's solutionNick Hobson2004-06-13 13:34:15
SolutionSolutionratsnstuff2003-10-13 07:02:19
SolutionEasy SolutionLewis2003-06-11 05:48:57
SolutionNo Subjectdanny2002-12-11 12:49:15
dizzy, but not impossibleCarey2002-05-28 01:09:51
incredibly dizzyMike2002-05-10 15:14:38
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