Question

A Ferris wheel is boarding platform is 2 meters above the ground, has a diameter of 48 meters, and rotates once every 5 minutes. How many minutes of the ride are spent higher than 38 meters above the ground

Answer 1

Answer:

Step-by-step explanation:

I discounted the 2-m ramp. If we are supposed to be looking for the length of time the ride is above 38 m from the ground, that translates to 36 m from the very bottom of the circle that is the Ferris wheel (where the wheel would meet the "ground"). I first found the circumference of the circle:

C = 48(3.1415) so

C = 150.792 m

I enclosed this circle (the Ferris wheel is a circle) in a square and then split the square in 4 parts. Each square has a quarter of the circle in it. If you divide the circumference by 4, that means that the arc length of each quarter circle is a length of 37.698 m. But that doesn't put us 36 m above the ground, that only puts us 24 m above the ground (remember the diameter of the circle is 48, so half of that is 24, the side length of each of the 4 squares). What that means to us (so far, and we are not at the answer yet) is that when the height off the ground is 24 m, a car that starts at the bottom of the ride has traveled 37.698 m around the circle. Traveling in an arc around the outside of the circle is NOT the same thing as a height off the ground. Going around a circle takes longer because of the curve. In other words, if the car has traveled 37.698 m around the outside of the circle, it is NOT 37.698 m above the ground...it's only 24 m above the ground. Hence, the reason I enclosed the circle in a square so we have both the circle's curve {arc length} and height above the ground {side of the square}). As the car travels farther along the outside of the circle it gets higher off the ground. If one quarter of the circle is 24 m above the ground, we need to figure out how much farther around the circle we need to go so we are 36 m above the ground. The height difference is 36 - 24 = 12m. we need now to find how long the arc length of the circle is that translates to another 12 m (the difference between the 24 we found and the 36 total). Using right triangle trig I found that arc length to be 12.566. The total arc length on the circle that translates to 36 m above the ground is 50.26437 m.

Going back to the beginning of the problem, the circumference of the circle is 150.792, and it makes one complete revolution in 5 minutes. That means that a car will travel 30.1584 m in 1 minute. Since this is the case, we can use proportions to solve for how long it takes to get 36 m above the ground:

$\frac{m}{min}:\frac{30.1584m}{1min}=\frac{50.26437m}{xmin}$ and cross multiply:

30.1584x = 50.26437 so

x = 1.6667 minutes, the time it takes to reach a height of 36 m. BUT this is not what the question is asking. The question is asking how long it's HIGHER than that 36 m. Let's think.

The car starts at the bottom of the ride, gets to a height of 36 m, keeps going around the circle to its max height of 48 m, then eventually comes back down and keeps going til it's back on the ground. That means that there is a portion at the top of the wheel that is above 36 m. If it goes 50.2647 m around the circle til it's at 36 m, then when it passes the max height and drops back to 36 m, it's 50.2647 m around the other side of the circle. We just found that to travel that 50.2647 m, it took the car 1.6667 minutes. We travel this distance twice (once meeting the height going up and then again coming down) so that takes up 3.3334 minutes.

5 minutes - 3.3334 minutes leaves us off 36 m above the ground for 1.6664213 minutes.