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)

The below is in error, pointed out by nikki.

While the 13.928 meters would avoid starvation, the ant would be more comfortable with sqrt(6^2+12^2)=13.42 approx. as shown below so long as he's comfortable with a small portion of his walk being on the ceiling.  I don't know if that's something covered by the "etc." of things he can't do.

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

Added: a to z in your later drawing.

Edited on January 21, 2005, 3:19 pm

Edited on January 21, 2005, 4:20 pm

Posted by Charlie on 2005-01-21 15:16:51