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Old 10-04-2005, 07:27 PM   #6 (permalink)
politicophile
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Quote:
Originally Posted by shakran
I don't pretend to have the math intelligence to actually solve this thing, but I did notice something that might help someone smarter than me do it. The turtle walks 1 foot. Achilles then stretches the WHOLE band, including the part of the band the turtle has already walked over, 3 feet. Then the turtle walks another foot, so now even more of the band is behind him, so even more of that 3 foot stretch will be behind him. So each time the turtle moves, there's less stretching of the band in front of him since an ever-increasing part of the 3 foot stretch will be behind him.

I think he'll eventually reach Achilles, but like I said, I'm not good enough to figure out when.
Damn, you are entirely right: I somehow managed to neglect to consider that the other end of the band was fixed. This would work out exactly like Zeno's paradox - I don't have the math skillz to solve the thing, though...
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