Buffon's needle

There is a table which have several brown lines, each distance is d d .

Buffon is going to throw a blue needle, which length is L L , on the table.

If the probability of the needle to touch at least one brown line is A A , compute 10000 A \lfloor 10000A\rfloor .

Details:

1) d = 2 c m d=2cm .

2) L = 10 c m L=10cm (It is a long needle!)

3) Assume that the probability of Buffon throw the needle at different direction is equally distributed.

Bonus: Generalize it.


The answer is 9361.

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1 solution

Kelvin Hong
Sep 3, 2017

Let the probability of the needle touch at least one of the brown lines at direction θ \theta is P ( θ ) P(\theta) .

because only the ratio of L L to d d make sense to this question but not the value of L L and d d separately, let the ratio λ = d L \lambda = \frac{d}{L} , for this question, λ = 0.2 \lambda=0.2 .

When s i n θ λ sin\theta \leq \lambda ,

P ( θ ) = s i n θ λ P(\theta)= \frac{sin\theta}{\lambda}

When s i n θ > λ sin\theta > \lambda ,

P ( θ ) = 1 P(\theta)=1 , this says that when θ \theta between some interval, the needle must touch at least one of the brown lines.

Using Desmos Graphing Calculator,

The shaded region is the area under P ( θ ) P(\theta) .

Because all direction are equally distributed,

A = A r e a s h a d e d r e g i o n π A = \frac{Area_{shadedregion}}{\pi} , denominator is the length of horizontal.

Noted that orange line represent x = s i n 1 λ x=sin^{-1} \lambda , purple line represent x = π s i n 1 λ x=\pi - sin^{-1} \lambda .

π A = A r e a s h a d e d r e g i o n = 2 0 s i n 1 λ s i n θ λ d θ + π 2 s i n 1 λ \pi A = Area_{shadedregion} =2\int_0^{sin^{-1}\lambda} \frac{sin\theta}{\lambda}d\theta +\pi - 2sin^{-1} \lambda

After some calculation,

A = 2 λ π ( 1 1 λ 2 ) + 1 2 π s i n 1 λ = 0.9361232232 A = \frac{2}{\lambda \pi}(1-\sqrt{1-\lambda^2})+1-\frac{2}{\pi}sin^{-1}\lambda = 0.9361232232

So,

10000 A = 9361 \lfloor 10000A \rfloor = \boxed{9361} .

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