Sunday, March 31, 2013

I continue my list of favorite problems

I remember this problem amazed me.  I was surprised by its beautiful solution that I will show you later not to spoil some fun to those of you who wants to try to solve it.

Four robots are initially at the vertices of a unit square.  They start moving simultaneously with the same speed, each one keeping its direction to the right closest neighbor.  Where do they meet and what distance will each one cover to the meeting point?

2 comments:

  1. Not the type of solution you had in mind, but a simulation of that makes a cute little programming exercise- had fun watching it plot out the paths as it goes. Looking forward to seeing the mathematical solution.

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  2. I have never thought of it as a computer simulation. Now, when you mentioned it, it seems a great simple programming problem. I will post a solution and some extensions to this problem probably tomorrow because of some time constrains.

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