This problem was part of my OU Maths foundation course. It does not have a simple solution, involves a lot of trigonometry and then iteration to converge to the solution. As I recall, the answer, was about 0.6 of the radius.
Laurie
On 2 September 2017 at 13:52, AndyHC andy@hawthorncottage.com wrote:
The first computer I owned was a Dragon32, but I had learned BASIC years before on a GE remote time-sharing mainframe. With the instructor's help I wrote an algorithmic solution to a maths puzzle that had plagued me for years. If anyone wants to try it, here's the puzzle:
A farmer tethers a bull at the circumference of a circular field of known diameter so the bull can graze half of the area of the field. How long is the rope? /(This is supposed to have been set, by accident, as an O level maths question - it should probably have said the centre of the field, although that would be a bit trivial.)/
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