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And now a real poser:

Why do politicians reflect the average intelligence of the people who elect them?

John from A

Did you see that in the Mirror?

JimB

Haha JimB and John d'A !!!

Your
	questions
		are a bit
			MEAN !

BW.
JimC

JimC

Looks like you're stepping down a little??

JimB

---but only if you are travelling left to right!

Quote:
"Boxing is a game where you have to face fighters"
Amir Khan

Hey JimC,

RE " 1/(-4) + 1/2 + 1/2 + 1/4 = 1

Any (of the infinite number of integer) values for a & d that cancel each other out would work."

Well explained, it's easy to follow the logic in the daytime.

OK folks, it's Sunday morning so here's an easy one!

An army motorcyclist is escorting a 20 mile line of military vehicles. He drives at constant speed from his starting place at the back to the front of the line, and immediately returns with the same speed to the back of the line. He arrives at the back just as the line has moved 20 miles. How many miles did the motorcycle travel?

Can't be easy John, no answers yet.

Hmmm yes, lazy Sunday! We'll never get to 200 posts if you don't all pull your socks up!

Here's how you do it:

We know that the motorcyclist ends up 20 miles from where he started, so let's call the extra distance he travelled before he turned X. So he covered 20 + X miles from his starting place
at the back to the front of the line and he covered X miles back again.

Let V and v be the velocities of the motorcyclist and of the vehicles respectively.

So the time to go from back to front is:

(20+X)/V = X/v

and the time to go from front to back again is:

X/V = (20-X)/v

By rearranging those equations we get:

(20+X)/X = X/(20-X) = V/v

so:

X^2 = (20 + X)*(20 - X)

X^2 = 400 + (20 * X) - (20 * X) - X^2

X^2 = 200

X = sqrt(200)

Thus the motorcycle has travelled

20 + (2 * sqrt(200)) = 48.284 miles