The Mumbo-Jumbo tribe lives at a river. Once two members of a tribe — a young warrior Mumbo and a wise shaman Jumbo — departed to the neighboring tribe with an urgent news. Mumbo ran at km/h to the nearest location of the rafts, took a raft and drove it to the neighboring tribe. Jumbo went at km/h to another raft location and took a raft there. It appeared that Jumbo came to another tribe earlier than Mumbo.
The river is straight, and the rafts move only at the velocity of the river flow. This velocity is constant, and it has an integer value (in km/h). Find the greatest possible value of the river flow velocity. (M. Evdokimov, reformulated by L. Samoylov)
Solution
Answer. km/h.
Let the location of the Mumbo-Jumbo tribe be , the raft location to which Mumbo ran be , and the raft location to which Jumbo went be . Obviously, is upstream from , and is downstream.
Let the distances from to and be and km respectively (), and let the river speed be km/h. The time Jumbo spent from to is hours, and Mumbo spent hours. Clearly, Jumbo arrives at the neighboring tribe earlier than Mumbo if and only if
Since , it follows from this inequality that
Dividing by and rearranging, we get .
It remains to check that the river speed could be km/h. For this, in the inequality , set and equivalently transform it to . This is possible (for example, for km, km), which completes the solution.
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