Cooking For Engineers

capstinence · Joined: 12 May 2005 Posts: 44 Location: Los Angeles, CA

There is a rope ladder hanging over the side of a ship. Each of the rungs of the ladder are a meter apart. The tide rises at the rate of 80 centimeters an hour. How many rungs are covered after four hours?

Guest · Posted: Mon May 16, 2005 12:11 pm Post subject:

I need more details, as many as you can give. starting position of the latter is going to matter. Also want to verify that metre = meter = 100 centimeters so that i can exclude any tricks.

capstinence · Joined: 12 May 2005 Posts: 44 Location: Los Angeles, CA

You do not need any more details, but sure - a meter is 100 centimeters (I fixed the spellings).

OSUsammy13 · Joined: 14 May 2005 Posts: 9

I have looked at this several times and I finally got the right answer (not posted b.c I don’t want to ruin the suspense). This is clever but very strait forward.
Next time someone asks for more details, even if they aren't relevant to finding the answer, it would be a good technique just to make up the details. Word problems are great when you have to decipher the relevant data.

Also - Forum postings should have spell check, engineers - specifically me - are not able to spell.

Konquest · Joined: 08 Jun 2005 Posts: 3

The answer is pretty straightforward... I'll white it just below, so there is minimal spoilers...

The boat rises with the tide, so the rope ladder is not covered by the tide coming up... Big smile

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Michael Chu · Posted: Sat Feb 28, 2009 9:22 am Post subject:

But how many rungs were covered to begin with? Without that info, the question is unanswerable.

GaryProtein · Joined: 26 Oct 2005 Posts: 514

Michael Chu · Posted: Tue Mar 03, 2009 6:06 am Post subject: