Posted by Anonymous on Tuesday, October 4, 2011 at 5:14pm.
Let the woman be b feet from the pole, and let her shadow be a feet long.
Using similar triangles,
a/6 = (a+b)/16
so a = 3/5 b
da/dt = 3/5 db/dt = 3/5 * 4 = 12/5 ft/sec, a constant speed.
That seems odd. I expected her shadow's length to accelerate, but I don't see an error. These problems usually involve a steadily changing angle, and with the tangent function things speed up quickly. Not so here...
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