Two boats leave a dock at the same time?

Two boats leave a dock at the same time. Once boat is headed directly east at a constant speed of 35knots, and the other is headed directly south at a constant speed of 22 knots. Express the distance d between the boats as a function of the time t.

Tags: Express, Knots, Time T, Two Boats

This entry was posted on Friday, October 30th, 2009 at 5:15 pm and is filed under Boats & Boating. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “Two boats leave a dock at the same time?”

1. Chilly Willy Says:
   October 31st, 2009 at 2:26 am

   This is a right-angled triangle. Each boat is traveling down one side of the right triangle. Boat A is at distance 35t from the origin. Boat B is at distance 22t. The hypoteneuse is the distance. Using pythagorean theorem:

   Distance = Square Root ( (35t)^2 + (22t)^2).

   This works unless they are very close to the South Pole, but I don’t think that’s what your teacher had in mind.

2. jims Says:
   November 2nd, 2009 at 9:31 am

   I’d give them both 100 yards, pass them at 150 yards, and lap them both in about 30 seconds.

3. werepoodle Says:
   November 2nd, 2009 at 9:38 pm

   That seems like a great problem for a student to figure out on their own.

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