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A dog is in the water 10 mile off the coast and wants to get to a town 40 miles down the rocky coast. She needs to swim to shore and then walk to the town. To what point, x, should she swim to along the shoreline so that the time it takes to get to town is a minimum? She can run 3 times faster than she swims.

User Ruks
by
7.8k points

1 Answer

2 votes

Answer:

This is a classic optimization problem in calculus. Let's denote the dog's swimming speed as

s and the dog's running speed as

3

3s. Also, let

x be the distance along the shoreline where the dog exits the water and starts running.

The total time

T for the dog to get to the town is the sum of the time spent swimming and the time spent running:

=

10

+

40

3

T=

s

10

+

3s

40−x

To minimize

T, we need to find the value of

x that minimizes

T.

=

10

+

40

3

T=

s

10

+

3s

40−x

Now, we can take the derivative of

T with respect to

x and set it equal to zero to find the critical point:

=

0

dx

dT

=0

(

10

+

40

3

)

=

0

dx

d

(

s

10

+

3s

40−x

)=0

Solving for

x will give us the optimal point along the shoreline where the dog should start running to minimize the total time.

User Marengaz
by
7.5k points