14 Oct 05
Originally posted by Mathildethat's not proven
The right answer to the original question (found on www.thinking.com.au/solutions/bear.asp):
As the man must be at the North Pole, the bear must be white.
as far as you know, some evil people could have dropped the bear off and it landed at the north pole. Because the problem never says anything about the color, you don't know the color of the bear
17 Oct 05
1 edit
Originally posted by Mephisto2Excuse my idiocy, could you please explain this. It doesn't make sense to me.
Yes, the places where one can go 1 mile south, 1 mile east and 1 mile back north to arrive back at the starting point are:
2) Near the south pole, all the points on the parallel which is one mile above the parallel that has a circumference of 1 mile
17 Oct 05
Originally posted by KalsenThe earth is round (like a sphere). The north pole is 1 mile north from a straight west-east circumference ("parallel"😉 of 1 mile in the sphere. That means that you can cross exactly the whole earth by walking 1 mile west/east in that place. However, that isn't the only place where that happens. Any place 1 mile north from the symmetrically equal parallel (1 mile north of the south pole) does suffice, as you can cross the earth and come back 1 mile south of where you started.
Excuse my idiocy, could you please explain this. It doesn't make sense to me.