The
ladder makes an angle q with the ground. Let x
and y be as in the sketch on the left. From the two right triangles you
see that x / a = cos q and y / b
= sin q. Therefore Correct solutions were submitted by Augustin Murillo, Lou Cairoli, Burkart
Venzke, Ron Welch, Paul
Botham, Nancy Schwarzkopf, Nick McGrath, Ahmad Abd ElMaksood, Alejandro Vellano,
Al Zimmermann.
The
ladder makes an angle q with the ground. Let x
and y be as in the sketch on the left. From the two right triangles you
see that x / a = cos q and y / b
= sin q. Therefore
( x / a)2 + ( y / b)2 = 1
which is the equation of an ellipse.
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