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Insect Jump Illation (Posted on 2016-08-09) Difficulty: 3 of 5
An insect starts at the point (0, 0) on the Cartesian plane, and each minute jumps exactly 1 unit to a point having rational coordinates.

(i) Describe the procedure whereby the insect will be able to reach the point (1/5, 1/17) in a finite amount of time.

(ii) Can the insect ever reach the point (0, 1/4)? Provide adequate reasoning for your answer.

No Solution Yet Submitted by K Sengupta    
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Some research Comment 1 of 1
I think this page is the source of the puzzle:
http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/74062.html

It goes through a detailed solution to the puzzle, making use of Pythegorean triples and modular arithmetic.

  Posted by Brian Smith on 2016-10-30 18:25:24
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