Problem on applications of derivatives


Assignment:

A street light is at the top of a 14 ft tall pole. A woman 6 ft tall walks away from the pole with a speed of 7 ft/sec along a straight path. How fast is the tip of her shadow moving when she is 40 ft from the base of the pole?
 
Note: You should draw a picture of a right triangle with the vertical side representing the pole, and the other end of the hypotenuse representing the tip of the woman's shadow. Where does the woman fit into this picture? Label her position as a variable, and label the tip of her shadow as another variable. You might like to use similar triangles to find a relationship between these two variables.

Centerville is the headquarters of Greedy Cablevision Inc. The cable company is about to expand service to two nearby towns, Springfield and Shelbyville. There needs to be cable connecting Centerville to both towns. The idea is to save on the cost of cable by arranging the cable in a Y-shaped configuation. Centerville is located at ( 8, 0 ) in the xy -plane, Springfield is at ( 0, 4 ) , and Shelbyville is at ( 0, -4 ) . The cable runs from Centerville to some point ( x , 0 ) on the x -axis where it splits into two branches going to Springfield and Shelbyville. Find the location ( x , 0 ) that will minimize the amount of cable between the 3 towns and compute the amount of cable needed. Justify your answer.

To solve this problem we need to minimize the following function of x:
f(x) =

We find that f(x) has a critical number at  
To verify that f(x) has a minimum at this critical number we compute the second derivative f''(x) and find that its value at the critical number is, a positive number.
Thus the minimum length of cable needed is.....

Use Newton's method to approximate a root of the equation x3 + x + 4 =0 as follows.
Let x1 = -1 be the initial approximation.
The second approximation x2 is.......
and the third approximation x3 is.......

Provide complete and step by step solution for the question and show calculations and use formulas.

Solution Preview :

Prepared by a verified Expert
Mathematics: Problem on applications of derivatives
Reference No:- TGS01920270

Now Priced at $30 (50% Discount)

Recommended (98%)

Rated (4.3/5)