To clarify.

[davywavy]

1) It's not a trick question. There is an answer.
2) You might be helped if I point out the typo and say that the camel can carry 1000lbs, not 100. Sorr-ee!

Comments

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

It can carry 1000? Thank goodness, I'd started a chain series of solutions to ferry the camel across the desert in a manner of multiple stages of refueling...

[puddingcat.livejournal.com]

Me too :) Calculus rocks :)

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

With just paper tweaking I can get 750 lbs across without resorting to equations, a lot of waste left behind however.

[borusa.livejournal.com]

Hmm

I can get 8000lbs there, but it involves doing infinitely small shuttles to do so.

On half mile stops, then I get 2166 pounds there.

Robert

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, I obviously haven't done maths for way too long.

Teach me to work in a field where things think for you...

[puddingcat.livejournal.com]

Out of interest, how much did you get across? So we have a target to beat :)

Nearly there:

[puddingcat.livejournal.com]

He can't go more than 500 miles, because he needs to get back. If he goes distance d, the camel eats 2d pounds of hay.

So, if he goes 1 mile 10 times, he'll end up with 9,980 pounds of hay 1 mile out, or 10,000-2d.

When d=1,000, the hay at Damascus will be
10,000-2d = 10,000-2,000
= 8,000

Except the last trip he'll only need to do one way, so he'll save that distance worth of hay as well. So it'll be over 8,000lbs but I'm not sure by how much yet.

Re: Nearly there:

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

You sure? I have the formula at something like

10,000 - (9x*1000/x)

where X is the mini distance

ie 1000.

Re: Nearly there:

[puddingcat.livejournal.com]

That's what comes of doing 3 things at once :) I lost an order of magnitude, and didn't get round to taking account of the decreasing number of trips.

[borusa.livejournal.com]

Ha

Figured it out...

Ok...

There was a mistake in my earlier calculations.

The most hay I can practically get to damascus is 1400lbs, I think.

The most economical way to do so is so that each "cycle" of shuttles, you take exactly one less round trip.

The first go, you go 52.68 miles, and do 19 trips. Leaving you with 9000lbs remaining.
Eventually, you end up 200 miles out from Damascus with 2000 pounds of hay. 3 trips later...
Net result - 1400 lbs of hay

Re:

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Good lad; we ended up with 1399.xxxxxxx, about the same.
Using exactly the same system, as trips wwhich leave amounts non-divisible by 1000 are wasteful :)

[raggedyman.livejournal.com]

is there any set maximum to the amount we can carry?

[jonnyargles.livejournal.com]

So what about your own weight and your own food? Or are you and your food as light as air?

You owe me a prize

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

Your average camel of a type commonly found in Egypt and suitable for domestication and use as a beast of burden, of an age at which it is capable of bearing loads of which you speak, is about 300lbs.

Working on the stipulate that it can be priorly fed, else it would deplete its own cargo in a single journey, it has to be assumed that not only can the beast carry 10/3 times its own weight (a reasonable amount for such a dromedary creature) but it can also consume 20/3 times its own bodyweight in food, and metabolise it over the course of the journey. Therefore, when not fed, it's actually capable of carrying 3000lbs.

This is a special camel.

It may be cruel, but it's necessary to starve the Camel, (henceforth referred to as Bessie). Starved to the point of retro-metabolism, as they say in Captain Scarlet. It's necessary to build up a potential well of food-debt. This increases her capacity to store and metabolise food, and if observed to perform the same amount of labour as a round-trip to Damascus and back will build up a debt of some 2000lbs of hay. Repeat this twice. The camel now has a potential hay well of some 8000lbs, not including the original 1000lb carrying capacity. The 8000lb potential augments Bessie's carrying capacity to superhuman(camel) levels. She is now capable of carrying 9000lb of hay at any given time, in spite of being on the verge of malnutrition.

Here is where it gets exceptionally cruel. Along the road to Damascus, every 100th of a mile, you place 100th of a pound of hay. Using a clever blinkering system, the camel needn't be able to see nor smell the gargantuan load of hay she is carrying, yet will use her keen camel senses to find the small quantities that are before her, leading her on to the road to Damascus. Via this method, you arrive in Damascus with 8000lbs of hay and an anorexic camel.

Hiding your hay, you engage in some minor industral espionage, and unleash Bessie in the storage facility of a rival entrepeneur, depriving him of 8000lbs of hay. The potential well within Bessie has now been depleted, yet since it's now been demonstrated she has the capacity to consume up to 8000lbs of hay in one sitting, we have to adjust our maths.

Taking 1000lbs of hay (easily within her carrying capacity parameters) you take Bessie back to Cairo. Using her now 8000lb carrying capacity, you literally stuff her full of hay, and load another 1000 on her back. Since she metabolises the hay as the journey unfolds, you arrive in Damascus 1000 miles later, with 1000lbs of hay and a clinically obese camel.

You now kill Bessie. Given the amount of mistreatment you've inflicted on her, she'll be relieved. Remove the 7000lbs of unmetabolised hay from her system, and add it to the remainder of your stockpile, giving you 15000lbs of hay, and a dead camel.

Walk back to Cairo, since Bessie obviously wasn't carrying you on all the prior journeys. Sell 1000lbs of your hay, and buy another camel, then use the remaining 1000lbs of hay to fuel its journey back to Damascus.

You now have 15000lbs of hay, and a camel with only 1000 miles on the clock.

Alternatively, sod ferrying hay for a living and just sell Bessie for medical research purposes, and live like a king.

Re: You owe me a prize

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Genius.