1.

Problem Statement:

There is a radius 50 unit circle with points placed at each unit edge up until the
edge of the circle. There is a line running through the line of best sight for this
circle. If the points were to expand by 1.5 inches squared per year, how many
years would it take to hit the line of best sight? Each unit is 10 ft, each point has a
circumference of 2.5 in, and the line of sight goes through the point (25,.5).

2. Process:

To begin this problem I had to convert the circumference of each tree into its
radius. This would help us to determine how long it would take for the tree’s
radius to hit the line of best sight. We know that the circumference of each of
these trees is initially 2.5 in. We also know that the circumference equation for a
circle is C=2*pi*r. Using this information we can solve the equation for the radius.
First, we replace the C for 2.5, then divide everything by 2, then by pi, which will
finally give us the r of the equation. This comes out to .5 inches squared as the
initial radius of the trees.

The next step in this situation is to find the final area of the trees, the place where
it will hit the line of best sight. This was a complicated problem that took me a
while to figure out and solve. I made many mistakes and came to the wrong
conclusion twice before figuring it out. Throughout this process, I was working
with Maddie who was able to help me through aspects of conversion, something
that I am not adept at.
We need to find the tree that is closest to the line because it is the tree that will hit
the line first while growing. These trees come out to be (1,0) and (49,1). We now
need to find the distance these points are from the line. We can do this by
utilizing similar triangles. We can form a triangle from the point, (1,0) and the
origin. One of the sides of the triangle will be the line of sight. We can then use
trigonometry to find the distance between (1,0) and the line of sight. The only
issue at this point is that we don’t have enough information. We know that one of
the side lengths is 1, but nothing else. Similar triangles come in to help us find
that angle. The angle between this triangle and the triangle that we can make with
our line. But to do this we need to find the midpoint between our two points. We
can use the midpoint formula to find this. (x1+x2)/2, (y1+y2)/2.
After finding the midpoint we know that we can create a triangle that’s
hypotenuse runs the length of the line of sight.

X1 is 1, x2 is 49, so that answer is 50, then divided by 2 will give us 25. For the
second we have 0 as y1 and 1 as y2, and added together is 1, then divided by 2
will give us .5. That means our midpoint is (25,.5). We can then use this to create a
new triangle.

With this triangle, we can use trigonometry to find the angle used which is the
same angle used in the smaller triangle. We know Soh Cah Toa, and in this
instance, we will use Tan because we have the adjacent and opposite sides. The
only issue with this is that we don’t have the angle, but we do have the side
lengths. Using these side lengths we can use arcTan to find the angle. Plugged
into an equation this becomes arcTan(x)=.5/25 which can become…
Ultimately this comes equal to x=1.145. This gives us the angle for the total
triangle and our smaller triangle. Unfortunately, the first time I did this, I thought
that this was the final radius, as stated…

I then used this to calculate the final area and how long it would take to get this
area from the rate of change. This came out to be a massive number, but it
seemed plausible in comparison to the other orchard sizes that we practiced on.
For a radius of 6, we got 810.83 years for it to hit the line of sight. For this one,
radius 50, we originally got 39539.24 years to hit the line of sight. I thought that it
might be compounding as the radius gets bigger. In this situation, the final area
would have to be 59309.37 inches squared which was way too big. After getting
this answer I thought that I was done and prepared to start working on my
write-up. Unfortunately, Maddie told me that we had made a mistake and skipped
a large section of the process we were supposed to do.
This problem became worse when I wasn’t able to come to math the next day.
This was because I was supposed to lead a tour for a potential community
member and connection to Animas. This made me fall behind in writing my
write-up, but I was able to overcome this and started working on it at home. I
realized that I needed to take the “final radius” we found, which turned out to be
the angle I needed to find the final radius and plug it into a new triangle. This was
my next step. I then created a smaller triangle with the (1,0) point and the line of
sight. I had a triangle with a hypotenuse of 1 and an angle of 1.145˚ which was
enough to find the distance from (1,0) and the line of best sight. I found that I
needed to use sin because we had the opposite and the hypotenuse. The
equation came out to be Sin(1.145)=x/1. I solved this and got .0199826.

I decided to round this up to .01 which ultimately turned out to be a mistake. This
was .01 of a unit which is 10ft, so I had to multiply this by 10 to get .1. I then had
to convert this to inches instead of feet because everything else, the other areas
and circumferences are in inches. This meant we had to multiply our answer by
12, getting 1.2 as our final radius needed.
We can then take the final radius to get the final area of the trees before they hit
the line of sight. We can solve this from the area equation. A=pi*r^2. A=pi*1.2^2,
which came out to be 4.5216 as our final area. I then plugged this into our time it
takes equation, the area final = the area initial + the rate of change multiplied by
the number of years. 4.5216=.5+1.5x. We subtracted .5 from each side to get
4.0216=1.5x. After that, we divided both sides by 1.5 to isolate the x. In the end, it
comes out to be 2.681 = x. This seemed to be an incredibly small number of years
for the tree to cover the line of sight.

I decided to check my answer with Maddie’s and realized my answer was too
small, hers was incredibly different. I went back through all of my work to try and
find the reason for my failure, but I couldn’t find anything until I realized it was
because I used an improper final radius. I falsely rounded my answer from .01998
to .01 which changed my answer from there. I decided to go back and use the
whole number instead of my wrongly rounded number. This worked and I
multiplied it by 10 to get .1998 which I multiplied by 12 to get the distance in
inches which came out to be 2.3976 as my final radius. I then plugged this into
the area formula to get this as the final area. A=pi*2.3976^2. I got 18.05 from this
as my final area.
I then plugged this into the time it takes equation, 18.05=.5+1.5x. I first subtracted
.5 from both sides to get 17.55=1.5x, then divided both sides by 1.5 to isolate the
x getting 11.7=x. This means that it would take 11.7 years for the trees to grow
enough to cover the line of sight.

4. Solution:

Ultimately, it will take 11.7 years for the trees to grow to cover the line of sight.
5. Evaluation:

I believe that this POW went well, I grew a lot and used a lot of
communication/teamwork and refinement. I worked with Maddie for the majority
of the process, until I had to leave for a day. Teamwork is something that I value
because we can’t know everything alone. If we have others there to help us, then
we can be open and focus on a certain portion of the problem, then our partners
can also do that for a different section. I believe that I would have been able to
solve this problem alone, but with the help of Maddie and John, I was able to do
more and finished the problem more quickly. I also think that I used a lot of
refinement in this problem. At first, I was too hasty in solving it, and that led me
to get the wrong answer. I used refinement to go back and change my answer. I
think this is one of the cornerstones of project-based learning, learning from your
mistakes and correcting them to learn more. This whole unit was based on this in
a way. At the very beginning, John showed us the final problem and talked to us
about what might happen with it. He then changed that and showed us something
entirely different. He broke the problem down into smaller parts without us
realizing it. We learned the distance and the midpoint formulas, then the area and
circumference formulas, all of which came back to help us later when trying to
solve the actual unit problem. We learned how to solve smaller versions of the
larger problem, but didn’t realize how we could solve the total problem until the
very end. At this point, everything came into focus and I realized what we were
learning. I think that I utilized my time throughout this first semester well when it
comes to learning what I needed to for the final problem. I wish that I could have
focused more on the formulas needed and memorized them instead of relying on
the posters on the wall.