South, East, North?

Geometry Level 2

You go south 10 miles, east 10 miles, and then north 10 miles, and you end up in the same place you started. How many different degrees latitude could you have started from?

Clarification: The blue lines above represent different lines of latitude.


Image credit: Encyclopedia Britannica.
This is an impossible scenario 1 2 3 4 There are infinitely many starting point

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1 solution

Geoff Pilling
May 20, 2016

Well the obvious place is the north pole.

However, you could also go down toward the south pole, and if you start at a position where if you go 10 10 miles south, then going east for 10 10 miles is essentially walking in a circle and returning to where you started (i.e. the line of latitude at that point is a circle with a 10 mile circumference), then the above would also be satisfied. Its also satisfied if you pick a position such that once you walk 10 10 miles south, going west returns you to where you started after going 5 5 miles, so doing 2 2 such loops would be 10 10 miles. And similarly you can choose infinitely many \boxed{\mbox{infinitely many}} positions chosen such that after going 10 10 miles south you "encircle the globe" n n times when you walk 10 10 miles east, since this will work for any arbitrary value of n n .

Note, the solution set consists of one point at the north pole, and then any number of points (a little more than 10 10 miles north of the south pole) chosen such that when you go south 10 10 miles you wind up at a spot where you will "encircle the earth" an integral number of times in 10 10 miles, so walking north again 10 10 miles puts you back where you started.

It's an interesting solution but I don't think it's correct to say that you can go ten miles east when you're on the South Pole, as you are not in fact going anywhere. I think the question needs to be more specific about what going ten miles east means. It is also fair to say that the idea of a "pole" does not actually exist, as the earth only roughly resembles a sphere.

Perhaps instead you could talk about a point on the surface of the sphere, with the sphere being rotated about different axes?

Ben Merrett - 5 years ago

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You're not exactly at the south pole; you're near it that going 10 miles to the east makes a whole circle (or two, three, four, etc) around the south pole.

Ivan Koswara - 5 years ago

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Yup... That's correct!

Geoff Pilling - 5 years ago

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Yes @Vighnesh Shenoy I very well remember this one! Finally we have a proper solution😉

Thanks @Geoff Pilling sir for a great explanation to the problem.

Miraj Shah - 5 years ago

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Cool... Glad you like it! :^)

Geoff Pilling - 5 years ago

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