Pow 5

POW #5: 4 Towns
Oli Sakadinsky and Ellen Campbell
Problem:
In problem of the week number 5 we were given the problem of four towns, represented by dots,
in the shape of a square. Distance from dot to dot or the sides of the square is 1 mile long. The
question at hand is how to connect the dots using the minimum amount of lines or roads. We
needed to write a function for this question in order to describe the total length of the lines in
terms of a variable. We also needed to minimize the function to give the ideal length of the lines
to connect the dots. Another major aspect to this problem was finding a shape that would
optimize the distance from dot to dot.
Process:
Our first task was to figure out the general shape of the road connecting the four towns. This
was the simplest aspect of the problem-- all we did was guess and check until we found a
formation that minimized the length of the road. Since an X shape resulted in a distance of 2.8
miles and an I shape resulted in a distance of 3 miles, we decided to combine the two shapes,
creating one line that branched off on either side to connect to two towns per side. When we
tried this, it immediately produced a road length shorter than either the X or I alone would
have produced.
Now that we had the general shape, we had to optimize the long length in the middle of it to see
which length would result in the shortest road distance. To do this, we needed an equation that
would give us the total length of the road. This equation was R=x+4y, where R is Road and
the 4 slanted pieces are represented by y while the one straight section is represented by x. We
needed to find the derivative of the road length function to find its maximums and minimums,
and we couldnt do that with two variables in the equation; therefore, we needed to find out what
y was in terms of x. To do this, we created a triangle in our picture, drawing a line down from
one of the splits in the road and connecting it to the other end of the road along the edge of the
square. This resulted in a right triangle with x and 0.5 as the legs and y as the hypotenuse.
When we carry out the Pythagorean Theorem, we get y= , which, if we plug into the road
length equation, gives us
The derivative of this is
we did this, we got
R=x + 4 , or
R '=
x 2+ 0.25 1/ 2 .
R=x +4
(4 x)
+1, which we needed to set to zero and solve for x. When
0.1294, which gives us 2.195 or 1.936. Since the latter was the
smaller number, we decided to test it out to see if it worked. To find exactly where the minimum
of the function is, we had to find the second derivative of the road length equation, which ended
up being R=1/(x^2 + 0.25)^(3/2). When we plugged in 1.936 into this equation, we got 0.258,
which would be the length of x in the right triangle we used when creating the road length
equation. We multiplied this by two to account for the length of the square not used for the road,
then subtracted that from 1 to determine the length of the square that was used for the road,
which gave us 0.484. To find the lengths of the four branches of the road (4y in the road length
POW #5: 4 Towns
equation), we used the Pythagorean Theorem again with .0.258 (what we got for x) and 0.5 as
our leg lengths. This resulted in a y value of 0.563, which, when multiplied by 4, equals 2.25.
Adding this to the length of the straight section (0.484), we get 2.734 miles as our final answer.
Solution:
Our solution to this problem of the week was 2.734 miles for the shortest distance connecting
the towns. Using a shape of a letter mixture between X and I we were able to make a triangle to
determine the road lengths through derivatives and the Pythagorean Theorem.
Justification:
We know our answer is correct because plugging in any other value into the road length
equation will always result in a number either higher than 2.73 or impossible within the confines
of our experiment. If the road length equation is R=x+4y, and we got 0.484 for x and 0.563 for y,
any numbers other than what we got for x and y wouldnt work. For example, if we used 0.584
for x, we would get 0.542 for y, which, when plugged into the road length equation, gives us
2.376. Changing the y value would give us a similar result-- if we made y 0.442, we would get a
negative value for x, which is impossible since we cant have a negative amount of road.
Therefore, our answer has to be correct.
POW #5: 4 Towns

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POW #5: 4 Towns

Oli Sakadinsky and Ellen Campbell

The derivative of this is

we did this, we got

POW #5: 4 Towns

Oli Sakadinsky and Ellen Campbell

POW #5: 4 Towns

Oli Sakadinsky and Ellen Campbell

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