It's a beautiful Friday morning. The wind is gently rolling over the hills and the view from the course does not disappoint.
Starting at ( 0 , 0 ) , Jake tells Trevor to move in a spiral with the nth move being of length n 2 1 starting at step n = 1 and continuing to step n → ∞ and turning 9 0 ∘ clockwise after every move.
What is the straight line distance (magnitude) of the final displacement in meters Trevor and Jake travelled from the origin? Answer to 3 decimal places.
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@Trevor Arashiro You two must be getting tired with all this piggybacking. :P Just thought I should mention that there is some un-Latexed text in the question. You may also want to mention that the n th move has the given length.
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Thanks for catching that. :)
Btw, we switched positions. In his problems, he was piggybacking me. Now, I'm piggybacking him since he ran out of energy. Haha.
I'll post my solution later as our solutions differ by a relatively noticeable margin. I didn't know about Catalan's constant so I couldn't do it by your methods.
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@Trevor Arashiro Just a quick note about your new "mini-problem". I got an answer, (which I shall not mention), which was considered incorrect. I then checked WA, which confirmed my answer. Would you mind having a second look at your posted answer? Thanks. :)
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@Brian Charlesworth – Once again, I dont know what I was doing. Lol, I've been posting some erroneous problems recently due to how busy Ive been with Brilliant and school and golf.
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@Trevor Arashiro – No worries! I'm amazed that you have any time at all for Brilliant given everything else that's going on for you right now. :)
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Eyyy, glad to see you back Brock. Haven't seen you on for a few weeks or so. I see you still haven't changed a bit, solving everything through CS :P
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I didn't know you played Hat Fortress 2.
My Steam name is Jeezy Creezy Lemon Squeezy if you want to add me. I must warn you however I have vast hat wearing capabilities.
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Hahah, well in that case I guess you're a better player than I if you have more hats. I haven't played in a while because Ive been so busy lately.
Of course, I'll add you when I get a chance.
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Without loss of generality we can assume that Trevor first heads east, (i.e., in the positive x -direction), then north, (i.e., in the positive y -direction), then west, south, east, north, and so on ad infinitum.
The net distance traveled in the positive x -direction is then
X = k = 0 ∑ ∞ ( − 1 ) k ( 2 k + 1 ) 2 1 = K , Catalan's constant , which has a value of
0 . 9 1 5 9 6 5 5 9 4 1 7 7 . . . . (Interestingly, it is not known if this number is irrational.)
The net distance traveled in the positive y -direction is
Y = k = 1 ∑ ∞ ( − 1 ) k + 1 ( 2 k ) 2 1 = 4 1 k = 1 ∑ ∞ ( − 1 ) k + 1 k 2 1 = 4 A
where A = k = 1 ∑ ∞ k 2 1 − 2 ∗ k = 1 ∑ ∞ ( 2 k ) 2 1 = B − 2 B = 2 B ,
where B = k = 1 ∑ ∞ k 2 1 = 6 π 2 , known as the solution to Basel's problem .
Thus Y = 8 B = 4 8 π 2 , and so the magnitude of Trevor's displacement is
X 2 + Y 2 = K 2 + ( 4 8 π 2 ) 2 = 0 . 9 3 9 to 3 decimal places.