Ants puzzle


Pangolini sprinkles some ants onto the pole of length L meters. They
immediately start scampering along the pole in random directions. If
two ants run into each other then they both instantaneously reverse
their directions and are now moving away from each other. An ant can
change direction many times. Eventually, all of the ants will fall off
one or other end of the pole. If each ant travels at a speed of one 1m/
s, what is the maximum time until all ants have fallen off?

Answer> http://www.cs.cmu.edu/puzzle/solution9.pdf
Imagine that each ant carries a distinct flag as it scurries along.
Whe two ants meet they exchange flags. Thus the flags proceed
uniformly in one direction along the pole. The ants fall with the
flags and so it takes a maximum of L secs for all the flags (and the
ants) to fall into the buckets.

i have a few questions based on this puzzle.

Suppose there are n ants on pole of length L , 2n<L.

The ants from left to right has speeds 1,2,3,4,...n m/s. what is the
maximum time until all ants have fallen off ?

What if the speeds are v1,v2,v3...vn ?
a) v1<v2<v3<...<vn
b) v1<v2<v3..<vi > ...vj > ....>vn

How do we formulate this question so that i can get an answer ? Any
elegant ways of formulating this question.
.

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