A man is trying to climb over a frozen mountain that is 60 meters high. Every minute, he can climb 3 meters , but due to the slippery ice, he slips back 2 meters .
How long will it take him to reach the top of the mountain?
This section requires Javascript.
You are seeing this because something didn't load right. We suggest you, (a) try
refreshing the page, (b) enabling javascript if it is disabled on your browser and,
finally, (c)
loading the
non-javascript version of this page
. We're sorry about the hassle.
Every minute, the man is climbing 3 meters and falling 2 meters back, he is essentially climbing 1 meter every minute.
Therefore, he would have climbed 57 meters in 57 minutes.
The remaining distance is 3 meters until the top of the mountain.
He will take one more minute to climb 3 minutes and reach the top.
Considering that he has reached the top of the mountain, he won't slip back down.