How long did it take for waspwomans to catch the thief?

Question

waspwomans sent a bee to spot the thief. It took the bee 3 minutes to fly to the theif getting away on his bike and back to Waspwoman. the bee took 30 seconds To explain the story. waspwoman set off at 30mph after the thief going 15mph. How long did it take for wasp woman to catch up to him?

Answer 1

Sorry Elizabeth C.,

A poorly set-up problem. We know that the thief must have been going for 1.5 minutes (what it took the bee to catch him) at the very least (he left before the bee did!). BUT he may have been going for a lot longer than that, and the bee may be quite speedy. SO we don't know how far away he was, when the bee spotted him. It's true that waspwoman will close on him at 15 mph. But we can't calculate an ETA for her, because the total distance is unknown. From the inequality that he's >=3.5 minutes away (by the time waspwoman starts), he must be 15 mi hr^-1 * (3.5 min/(60 min hr^-1)) or >= 0.875 miles away (you do the math to get a time from that). But no maximum may be set.