A farmer has four straight segments of fence of lengths 60,70,90 and100 feet, which cannot be cut or bent. The farmer wants to fence off the largest possible area. How?
by 
Alexander
ANSWERS: 2
-
by placing them just like that because it forms triangles of greatest common multiple.
-
I don't have an exact solution or proof. But fiddling around a little -- using 6, 7, 9 & 10 as lengths -- I can see that if the long sides were perpendicular their diagonal would be sqrt(181) = 13.45... which is a little bigger than the sum of the two short sides. So I'm going to go out on a thin intuitive limb here and guess that the solution is to make the short sides (60 & 70 feet) collinear & use the long sides (90 & 100, meeting at a slightly acute angle) to complete a triangle.
RELATED QUESTIONS
Copyright 2023, Wired Ivy, LLC