After figuring how to plant your 10 trees in 5 rows, the tree keeper walks up to you.

I like your idea, but sometimes I get vicious squirrels that come and steal all the fruit off it...

I am installing some garden path such that it is harmless to humans but will shock squirrels. (This means the squirrels won't pass over it.) Can you place those 10 trees along 5 lines of straight garden path so that there are 4 trees on each garden path and there are some trees on the inside?

How would you arrange the trees this time?

but wouldn't the paths still be in a star (pentagram) shape? Then you place the trees just inside, instead of ON, the vertices.

Then all of the trees would be on the inside. So you would only have a problem if some squirrels started out somewhere inside the pentagram.

Another way to describe this is draw a regular pentagram. Draw another one that is slightly smaller than the first, with no rotation, and the "centers" should be at the same point.

The outer pentagram is the human path, and plant the trees on the vertices of the inner pentagram (this just helps illustrate that the trees are still placed with 5 rows of 4).

Posted by nikki on 2003-10-30 16:02:08