A Formal Statement of The Problem
The problem as stated above requires some assumptions to be made. The following fuller statement of the problem attempts to make most of those assumptions explicit.
- Consider a thin and infinitely stretchable rubber rope held taut along an -axis with a starting-point marked at and a target-point marked at, .
- At time the rope starts to stretch uniformly and smoothly in such a way that the starting-point remains stationary at while the target-point moves away from the starting-point with constant speed .
- A small ant leaves the starting-point at time and walks steadily and smoothly along the rope towards the target-point at a constant speed relative to the point on the rope where the ant is at each moment.
- Will the ant reach the target-point?
Read more about this topic: Ant On A Rubber Rope
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