Here's a conundrum: an ant on a rubber band

ERJ staff report (DS)

New York - The New York Times has a regular column called WordPlay to test your power of reasoning. The current column concerns an ant on an infinitely stretchy rubber band.

You find the Holy Grail of the rubber industry: an elastic material with infinite elongation at break (and non-linear stress:strain characteristics). Ahead of making your fortune, you hold one end and tie the other to the wall and start walking away at a constant speed (1 m/sec). The band starts to stretch.

Meanwhile, an ant has crawled onto the band and starts crawling toward you at 0.01 m/sec. Does the ant ever reach you?

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See the original conundrum and the commentary from New York Times