Ponder This

September 2010

<<August September October>>

Since the reels are similar, if the larger reel is 2.54 times bigger in diameter, its thread is 2.54² longer. The question can therefore be rephrased as follows: If you know that your distance from a line L is no more than 1, can you design a path of no more than 6.4516 in length that will guarantee you to intersect the line? The best way to do this is to trace the unit circle - a length of 2 pi = ~6.283 < 6.45. The problem is that we need to get there, which adds the radius (1) and makes the larger reel insufficient.
But the answer is yes. A possible path is

1. move, in an arbitrary direction, a distance of 2/sqrt(3), which gets you outside of the circle;
2. use a tangent to get back to the circle;
3. travel on the circle for 210 degrees;
4. leave at a tangent and keep going for 1.

It is easy to verify that any line tangent to the unit circle must cross our path and that the total length is 2/sqrt(3)+1/sqrt(3)+7*pi/6+1 < 6.4 < 2.54².

Part B refers to July 2007 ponder this challenge, which asked the same question in a different formulation.

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