Question

A lighthouse is located on a small island, 3 km away from the nearest point on a straight shoreline, and its light makes four revolutions per minute. How fast is the beam of light moving along the shoreline when it is 1 km from ?

Answer 1

Answer:

The beam of light is moving at the peed of:

$\frac{dy}{dt} = \frac{80\pi}{3}$ km/min

Given:

Distance from the isalnd, d = 3 km

No. of revolutions per minute, n = 4

Solution:

Angular velocity, $\omega = \frac{d\theta'}{dt} = 2\pi n = 2\pi \times 4 = 8\pi$    (1)

Now, in the right angle in the given fig.:

$tan\theta' = \frac{y}{3}$

Now, differentiating both the sides w.r.t t:

$\frac{dtan\theta'}{dt} = \frac{dy}{3dt}$

Applying chain rule:

$\frac{dtan\theta'}{d\theta'}.\frac{d\theta'}{dt} = \frac{dy}{3dt}$

$sec^{2}\theta'\frac{d\theta'}{dt} = \frac{dy}{3dt} = (1 + tan^{2}\theta')\frac{d\theta'}{dt}$

Now, using $tan\theta = \frac{1}{m}$ and y = 1 in the above eqn, we get:

$(1 + (\frac{1}{3})^{2})\frac{d\theta'}{dt} = \frac{dy}{3dt}$

Also, using eqn (1),

$8\pi\frac{10}{9})\theta' = \frac{dy}{3dt}$

$\frac{dy}{dt} = \frac{80\pi}{3}$