QOD #6 — Solution

Solution

There are an infinite number of locations from which one could walk one mile south, one mile east, and one mile north and be at the same place that one began.

You could start at any point on a circle drawn around the South Pole at a distance slightly more than 1 + 1 / 2 * PI miles (~1.16 miles) from the pole. The "slightly more" takes into account the curvature of the earth. After walking a mile south, your next walk of a mile east would take you on a complete circle around the pole and a walk one mile north from there would return you to your starting point. Thus your starting point could be any one of the infinite number of points on the scircle of radius ~1.16 miles from the South Pole.

You could also start at points closer to eht pole, so that the walk east would carry you just twice around the pole, or three times, or so on...

Comments

I had to extrapolate this QOD from the solution (and what I remembered as well)

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