Dear All,
This puzzle comes from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that finally
changed its petrol pumps from (UK) gallons to litres yesterday leaving
the USA as the only remaining supplier of fuel to the public in (USA)
gallons. See: http://www.uaeblogging.com/2009/12/the-end-is-nigh-3
Here's the puzzle:
In a field the shape of an equilateral triangle whose area is half an
acre, there is an unspecified grazing animal. The beast is attached to
one corner of the field by a rope, so that it can graze exactly 50% of
the area of the field. To the nearest foot, how long is the rope? Show
your working.
(You can ignore those parts of the rope around the animal’s neck,
around the post and making the knots, and you can assume as zero the
distance between the rope and the animal’s mouth. It’s a
straightforward geometry puzzle with no tricks.)
I assume that changing the acre to square metres and the rope length
to metres or millimetres is not permitted!
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
Author of the ebook, Metrication Leaders Guide, that you can obtain
from http://metricationmatters.com/MetricationLeadersGuideInfo.html
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216,
Geelong, Australia
Phone: 61 3 5241 2008
Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has
helped thousands of people and hundreds of companies upgrade to the
modern metric system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that they
now save thousands each year when buying, processing, or selling for
their businesses. Pat provides services and resources for many
different trades, crafts, and professions for commercial, industrial
and government metrication leaders in Asia, Europe, and in the USA.
Pat's clients include the Australian Government, Google, NASA, NIST,
and the metric associations of Canada, the UK, and the USA. See http://www.metricationmatters.com
for more metrication information, contact Pat at [email protected]
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