In a huge room lives a very hungry ant. The room is 4 meters wide, 4 meters high and 10 meters long. The ant is on one of the 4x4-meter walls, right in the middle (2 meters from each of the 4x10-meter walls), and 1 meter from the ceiling. Its food is on the opposite wall, also in the middle, but 1 meter from the floor. The poor ant is very hungry, and won't be able to walk more than 13.99 meters without dropping dead. Can it survive? (The ant cannot fly, jump etc.)

(In reply to Solution by David Shin)

My initial reaction to this problem was to approach it like "A fly on a cube" just like David Shin did. However, I messed up my drawing. I had the following:

 _ _ _ _
|       |
|       |
|   x   |
|_ _ _ _|_ _ _ _
|       |       |
|       |       |
|       |       |
|       |       |
|       |       |
|       |       |
|       |       |
|       |       |
|       |       |
|_ _ _ _|_ _ _ _|
        |       |
        |       |
        |   x   |
        |_ _ _ _|

I didn’t "fold out" one of the 4x4 walls correctly, so my equation was
D = Ö(14² + 4²) = 14.56

Instead, it should have been
D = Ö(13² + 5²) = 13.928 as David found.

I also thought of the falling method Syzygy found after I thought my unfolding method was incorrect.  Technically I think it could be legal.  Letting at ant fall is not giving an ant powers like flying or jumping.  It's just a victim of gravity =)

Posted by nikki on 2005-01-21 15:07:33