Car Traveling at Night

Initializing live version
Download to Desktop

Requires a Wolfram Notebook System

Interact on desktop, mobile and cloud with the free Wolfram Player or other Wolfram Language products.

A car is traveling at night along a highway shaped like a parabola with its vertex at the origin. The car starts at a position 100 m west and 100 m north of the origin and travels in an easterly direction. There is a statue located 100 m east and 50 m north of the origin. At what point on the highway will the car's headlights (or tail lights) illuminate the statue?

Contributed by: Edda Eich-Soellner (University of Applied Sciences, Munich, Germany) (March 2011)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA


Snapshots


Details

This Demonstration illustrates problem 6, p. 267 in J. Stewart, Calculus: Early Transcendentals, 6th ed., Belmont, CA: Thomson Brooks/Cole, 2008.



Feedback (field required)
Email (field required) Name
Occupation Organization
Note: Your message & contact information may be shared with the author of any specific Demonstration for which you give feedback.
Send