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Termyn8or -> RE: A little geometry problem (10/31/2008 8:52:59 AM)
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Calif, that's what I thought in a way, but the wording of the question is not quite clear.
"Apparently I hit the "squareroot" function twice on my calculator. The sqrt of 2 is 1.414, not 1.189. U = .70 of a day, or 16.8 hours. "
In your calculation U would be more accurately defined as .70711, therefore should be rounded up to .71 if one wants to only use two figures. But you seem to have seen it the way I saw it before I reread it.
First of all it was never said the person who walked straight walked a day, however, no matter what the trig figures out, if they walk at equal speed their paths might intersect, but they should never meet assuming one condition.
If the second person turned and was heading towards the reference path they would have had to turn 90 degrees to the left. In that case the second person walks a longer path to get back to the straight line, and it is longer by 1.4142 times. That is the original .70711 doubled, considering each side of the isoceles to be a right triangle.
What the OP actually said was turned 45 degrees, and as another pointed out, that would make their paths paralell. That would of course make the answer infinity.
That .70711 is like a magic number, it's where sine and cosine meet. Anything dealing with triangles can always be dealt with on the short end of the scale, or table. I used it alot in electronics years ago and when I was racing around like a crazy hoodlum (wait, I was a crazy hoodlum), I wanted to calculate G force in these fast cars I had. Had to sit there and convert MPH/H into FPS/S and then via vectors I would calculate the actual G force. I regret to report that rare is the car that can put you at 2 Gs. No matter how fast you think it is, it ain't. Just another piece of useless information I got just because I wanted it.
When I used to really have some spare time I got more. I don't want to go into all that right now but it has to do with very old computers, cars and machine shops.
T
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