These are the winning worksheets from our "Fly swatting with Mathcad" contest that we had run on the Mathcad blog in March/April 2011.
To recap, the problem was:
A fly is sitting at a distance of h from a man with a fly swatter. At time t=0 the fly is pursued by the man who has a constant acceleration of 1. The fly flies in a straight line away from the man with an acceleration of 0.6t. What is the largest initial separation, h, for which the man can intercept the fly?
Here are the winners:
- Alan Stevens for providing five different ways to arrive at the solution and solving it in both Mathcad Prime 1.0 and Mathcad 15. His two best solutions are provided below in both formats.
- Stuart Bruff for solving it both symbolically and numerically and illustrating the problem with plots and a slider control. Note: the worksheet is in Mathcad 11 format, the slider doesn't work in Mathcad 15.0.
- Fred Kohlhepp for providing an animation.
- Valery Ochkov for providing the correct solution and two plots.
- Andrew Kelly for solving it and providing a plot.
- David Heim for providing a straightforward solution.
Thanks to everyone who participated and congratulations to the winners!
