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An ant is inside the box, 1 cm from the bottom, and wants to go eat the drop of honey on the opposite side, 1 cm from the top. Both the ant and the honey are exactly 6 cm from the walls. Crawling on inside of the box, what’s the shortest distance the ant can crawl to get to the honey?
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Pinned
If the ant dropped to the bottom without effort, it could reduce it's -x distance to 31, and cut the path down closer to 39 inches! Given the ant doesn't bang his head and forget the Pythagorean theorem on the way down.
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cm*, forgive my Americanness
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The best cheap Japanese online shopping mall. 동전파스직구
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I got 37.3 by walking along wall to back wall to wall in a direct line to the honey.
Cut the top 1cm and bottom 1 cm of the box and you should see the path as a straight line with 2 turns at the corners.
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Pinned
I would say that, given that gravity is working from top to bottom, the answer should be 30cm:
The ant drops itself the meakly 1 cm to the bottom of the box and then slowly strolls over the 30 cm to the other shortside to where the honey now have trickled down.
IF the box instead is in a weightless state the ant just performs a skilled jump and lands directly on the honey. 😉
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Pinned
Now that’s thinking outside the box. No, can’t be. Surely it’s thinking inside the box. Hmmm. How about : Thinking around the box?
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Pinned
oh no, I forgot the inevitable ceiling of ant boxes. With an open box I geometrically approximated a solution down to 41,204
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36? Go down, straight along and then up 5. 1+30+5.
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He said the most direct way, so you have to pretend the ant moved diagonally.
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it would be up 11, giving you 42
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Visit the Wait But Why wiki! I created this site dedicated solely to Tim Urban’s amazing work. Help us grow this site! It also has an idea lab for us to discuss this book while we’re waiting for the official one.
https://wait-but-why.fandom.com/wiki/Wait_But_Why_Wiki
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Second.
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Hey Tim, how do you show that 40 is the shortest solution?
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Pythagorean Theorem?
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To those who my comment:
While Tim Urban is correct, using the Pythagorean Theorem 24²+32²=1600, then √1600=40, also works.
But yeah, Tim’s way is far easier and more direct.
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Meant to say “To those who disliked my comment”.
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You can unfold the box in a bunch of ways and in each case, connect the ant and honey with a straight line. This configuration produces the shortest route.
Tees, posters, plushies, mugs, totes – oh my!
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