Aspen Machicek

11/06/2023
Math 11 - POW 3
John Grotenhuis

Cable Ready - POW 3

PROBLEM STATEMENT:
You have an orchard on a circular lot with a straight electrical cable running through it. The cable
starts at the middle of the orchard (0, 0) and ends at point (30, 20). You want to start planting
trees before the cable is removed, but cannot place any trees on the cable. With this information…

QUESTION:
● Can you plant a complete mini-orchard of radius 1 from the center?
● Can you plant a complete mini-orchard of radius 2?
● What is the largest mini-orchard that you can plant without planting on the cable? 3? 4? 5?
● Looking at the biggest orchard in question 3, how big can the trees grow until you hit the cable?

PROCESS:
First step is to visualize this like we are seeing an aerial view of the orchard. We know that the orchard/lot
is in a circle so we will create a circle around the given center point (0, 0) and find the slope using the 2
points. This will show how the powerline is cutting through the orchard. See figure

(Figure 1)
In the figure you can see the circle which is the orchard, and the power line which cuts through the circle
straight through the middle. The figure shows the line going all the way through but it actually stops at
(0, 0) which is the center of the circle meaning that one radius of the circle is a powerline.

Now to figure out how large the orchard can be, the circle lot was expanded by one unit at a time until it
reached a point where the circle and the powerline overlapped where a tree would be planted. See figure
2; the points displayed are all examples of where trees would be planted (remember we CANNOT plant a
tree on the powerline).

(Figure 2)

Based on this graph we can see that if the circle
was expanded to reach point (3, 2) or point (6,4)
then a tree would be planted on the powerline.
This leaves us knowing that the orchard could
have a radius of 1, 2, or 3, but cannot exceed a
radius larger than 3.
The next thing I gathered was a little bit of
background data. Looking at the original unit
problem, we know that one unit on the graph
equals 10ft. With that information we can find
the area and circumference of the circle/orchard.
 AREA: CIRCUMFERENCE:
𝐴 = π𝑟² 𝐶 = 2π𝑟
𝐴 = π3² 𝐶 = 2π3
𝐴 = 28. 27 𝐶 = 18. 85

This info wasn’t totally necessary but it doesn't hurt.

The next thing I tried to find was the amount of growth the trees could have before they would come in
contact with the powerline. First I found the points with trees that were the closest to the powerline, and
four points were the same distance and the closest to the powerline out of all the trees. See figure 3 where
the points are marked; (1, 1), (2, 1), (-1, -1), (-2, -1).

Figure 3
To find “how much they can grow” we will use
the distance formula to find the distance between 𝐷 = (2 − 1. 8)² + (1 − 1. 2)²

a tree and the powerline. For my example I used

point (2, 1) (red dot), while the closest point of
𝐷 = 0. 04 + 0. 04
the powerline is at (1.8, 1.2). Now that we have
the points of the tree and the powerline, all we
need to do is find the distance between those 2
𝐷 = 0. 08 (0.282)
points.

SOLUTION:
● The circle/orchard cannot have a radius
larger than 3 otherwise a tree will be
planted on the powerline.
● The tree closest to the powerline can
grow roughly 0. 08 units (or 0.282
units) before it comes into contact with
the powerline.
REFLECTION/EVALUATION:

I actually really enjoyed this POW, I find certain methods really interesting when I come around to
understand them more and this felt like great practice with a real life scenario. It was easy to visualize the
math I was doing and it started to make a lot more sense. At this point I can definitely say that the
distance formula is probably the one I feel the most confident about. I was confused at first but then I
realized that a lot of my questions could be solved thinking more logically rather than just only
mathematically; things like which point (tree) do I measure because there are lots of trees growing that are
different distances from the powerline. I just had to evaluate all of the simple information first and narrow
down what exactly I was trying to figure out, then I could come in with the formulas and attempt to solve
it. Overall I did like this pow and it helped me a lot with practice on these types of formulas, along with
word problems which are usually not a strong point for me.