The Rabbit and the Tortoise

Logic Level 1

A Rabbit and a tortoise had a race on a race track of length 100 meters. The tortoise started from the 10 meter mark, because the rabbit was generous like me, and gave it a head start.

The tortoise travels at speed of 1 meter per second

The rabbit always travels half of the remaining distance to finish the race. For example, if rabbit is 2 meters away from the finish line, he will travel 1 meter.

Who will win?

(This is purely theoretical and not based on real life)

Both win, as they reach at the same time Tortoise Rabbit

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5 solutions

Frisk Dreemurr
Aug 5, 2020

The tortoise will have a constant speed of 1 m s 1 1ms^{-1} , thus, in 100 s 100s , the tortoise would have reached the finish line.

Though the hare doesn't take time to cover a distance, we know for sure that it will cover half the distance of the journey at every instance. No matter how many instances have passed, the hare can still split the remaining distance, and make it smaller and smaller as the instances pass. Thus, the hare will never finish the race.

Thus, the tortoise will win

Lesia Zhurba
Sep 9, 2020

Absolutely no need to use numbers here! Pay close attention to the problem:

The rabbit always travels half of the remaining distance to finish the race

From this, we can immediately say that the rabbit will never finish and will seek to finish the race for the remainder of eternity. This is called the halving distance or Zeno's Paradox . As you can see in the picture, the distance covered with each leap to the finish line constantly gets smaller forever. Therefore, the tortoise will win

Elijah C
Dec 14, 2020

The hare will never reach the finish line, because he will travel half of the remaining distance to finish the race. he will travel 1/2, then 1/4, then 7/8, then 1/16, then 1/32, then 1/64, then 1/128, then 1/256, then 1/512, etc. But the tortoise will win, because it takes 90 seconds to win, while the hare takes infinite time to win the race. It is not possible for the hare to win.

IF the rabbit always travels half the remaining distance the distance he has to travel always will get halved the rabbit can never finish. The tortoise will finish the race in hundred seconds

Waddles Pines
Aug 18, 2020

If the rabbit has 1 meter left, he will never make it. It goes to 0.5-0.25 and so on. He can't make it.

the problem is nice, but i took me two looks to notice this: 1 meter per second is quite fast for a tortoise ;-)

num IC - 5 months, 1 week ago

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Well, I did mention that this was all theoretical @num IC :)

A Former Brilliant Member - 2 months, 3 weeks ago

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