Magic Ants
There is a magical stick that is 245 inches long, with markings on every inch. On every inch marking (1 to 245) there are 2 ants, one facing right and one facing left. When two ants collide, they immediately turn around and start walking the other way. When a whistle blows, the ants all start moving in the direction that they are facing, When they are completely off the stick, what is the total amount of distance they have covered together?
The answer is 60270.
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1 solution
There are many versions of this puzzle. The key is to understand that the collisions do not affect the total distance, you can treat the ants as if they just pass through eachother. Then its easy to reason that each pair of ants will effectivly walk the whole stick of 245 inches. So the total distance for the given answer is 245(inches per pair)x246(number of inch marks from 0 to 245)=60270. However I argue this is not correct based on the way the question is worded, it specifically states that the ants are on the markings from 1 to 245 so the right answer should be 245x245 = 60025.