Question 1039089
.
I am not sure it must be under this category, as I don't know the solution:

A research team of students in the Physics department of University of South Carolina has been watching the movement of a flea for 60 minutes without interruption.
Each student continuously watched the movement for exactly one minute and during this time, each of them saw the flea move by 1 meter during his 1-minute observation. What is the minimum and maximum distance which the flea could have moved during the 60 minutes of observation? (distance, not displacement)

I believe the source of this problem is the Kvant magazine.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


<pre>
What if the flea moves along a circle?

Along a spiral? 

What if the flea moves 1 meter forward during 1 minute while exactly one student watches the move,

and then it flies 1 meter back during another 1 minute while another student watches its move?

Did I violate the condition?

The condition, as it was formulated, leaves a room for various/different scenarios/speculations.

While the good/right formulation should not leave a room for it.

One more question: is the distance measured "along the path" or simply between the starting and ending points?

One more gap/margin in the formulation.

Again, good/right formulation should not leave a room for it.
</pre>

And the last notice: a good reference (to a "Kvant magazine" in this case) should be more definitive.


(I have all "Kvants" saved as pdf-files from 1970 to 2011 in my comp).