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A hiker is headed back to her tent after a long day's hike, but she needs to swing by the river on her
way to refill her water bottles. She is on the same side of the river as her tent. What is the shortest
path she can take to her tent?
Solution:
In order to solve this question we decided to assume that the river was
straight, and we drew this:
Then from the point R where HT’ intersects the river the hiker
would travel to her tent, so her path would be HR then RT.
In order to prove that HR, RT is the shortest path possible, we need to show that RT ≅ RT’:
• By construction we know that CT ≅ CT’, and we know that ∡T’CR ≅ ∡TCR. We also know
that CR is congruent to itself.
• Therefore, by SAS, we can state that △RCT ≅ △RCT’.
• This implies that RT ≅ RT’.
Using the same proof, we can show that no matter where R is we will have congruent triangles.
In order to conclude this proof, we need to show that R is not on the segment HT’, the path from HR to
RT will not be the shortest path possible:
• If R is not on the segment HT’ then there exists a triangle HRT, and by triangle inequality, we
know that the measure of segment HT’ will be shorter than the combined measures of segments
HR and RT’.
From this problem we noticed that any point on the River will be equidistant from T and T’ because the
river is a perpendicular bisector of TT’. We were then able to come up with a theorem:
If a line l is a perpendicular bisector to segment AA’, any point on l will be
equidistant from A and A’.
We then wondered if the converse: If a point is equally distant from two points A and B,
then it lies on the perpendicular bisector of AB was true.
The next problem that we discussed was the other hiker problem:
A hiker is headed back to her tent after a long day's hike, but she needs to swing by the river on her
way to refill her water bottles. She is really thirsty and wants to get to the river as fast as possible.
What is the shortest path she can take to the river?
We know that this will be the shortest path for the hiker
to take because of the Pythagorean Theorem which
states:
In a right triangle, a2 + b2 = c2 where c is the
hypotenuse, or the side opposite the right angle.
a2
C
(a + b)2 = a2 + 2ab + b2 = a2 + b2 + 2C
2ab = 2C
C = ab
C
b2
The last thing we worked on today was:
The area of a parallelogram is the product of the length of a base and the corresponding height.
So far our proof is based on the idea that △ADF ≅ △BEG, so by moving the corresponding sides of
that triangle we have a rectangle FDEG whose area should equal to the area of parallelogram ADEB.
However, we still need to prove that A, B, and G are collinear so our proof is complete.
To do this I suggest that we construct G such that A, B, and G are collinear and AF ≅ BG. We can then
create segment EG which will be congruent to DF. From there we can prove that the area of the
parallelogram is equal to the area of the rectangle.