I Wish The Car Stayed Still

Calculus Level 4

A ladybug is climbing on a Volkswagen Beetle (a type of car). In its starting position, the surface of the car is represented by the unit semicircle x 2 + y 2 = 1 , y 0 x^{2} + y^{2} = 1, y \geqslant 0 in the x y xy -plane. The x x -axis is the road. At time t = 0 t = 0 the ladybug starts at the front bumper ( 1 , 0 ) (1, 0) , and crawls counterclockwise on the surface of the car at a unit speed relative to the car. At the same time, the car moves to the right at speed 10.

If the speed of the bug at t = π 4 t = \dfrac{\pi}{4} can be represented as S S , find 10 S \left \lfloor 10S \right \rfloor .


Credit : Problem information is adapted from MIT OCW.


The answer is 93.

This section requires Javascript.
You are seeing this because something didn't load right. We suggest you, (a) try refreshing the page, (b) enabling javascript if it is disabled on your browser and, finally, (c) loading the non-javascript version of this page . We're sorry about the hassle.

1 solution

Hobart Pao
Mar 18, 2016

You can represent the ladybug's position as a vector. You can decompose that vector into two vectors: one vector that connects the origin and the midpoint of diameter on the x x -axis on the Volkswagen Beetle, and another that connects the aforementioned midpoint and the ladybug's position.

The vector connecting the origin and aforementioned midpoint is 10 t , 0 \left \langle 10t, 0 \right \rangle because it is mentioned that its speed is 10. The vector connecting aforementioned midpoint and the ladybug's position is cos t , sin t \left \langle \cos t, \sin t \right \rangle because it's a unit semicircle. Adding the vectors together to get the vector giving the ladybug's position gives 10 t + cos t , sin t \left \langle 10t + \cos t, \sin t \right \rangle .

Let's call the vector that gives the ladybug's position L \vec{L} . Then , d L d t = 10 sin t , cos t \dfrac{d\vec{L}}{dt} = \left \langle 10 - \sin t, \cos t \right \rangle . But that's a velocity vector. The speed has to be a scalar, which is consequently d L d t \left| \left| \dfrac{d\vec{L}}{dt} \right| \right| , or the norm of the velocity vector, which is ( 10 sin t ) 2 + cos 2 t \sqrt{(10 - \sin t)^{2} + \cos^{2} t } . Let's denote speed as d S d t = 101 20 sin t \dfrac{dS}{dt} = \sqrt{101 - 20 \sin t} .

We wanted to know the speed at time t = π 4 t= \dfrac{\pi}{4} , so d S d t t = π 4 = 101 20 sin π 4 \left. \dfrac{dS}{dt} \right|_{t=\frac{\pi}{4}} = \sqrt{101- 20 \sin \dfrac{\pi}{4}} .

Finally, the problem statement asks for the floor of 10 times the speed at t = π 4 t= \dfrac{\pi}{4} , which turns out to be 93 \boxed{93} .

0 pending reports

×

Problem Loading...

Note Loading...

Set Loading...