2. Find the ellipse of smallest area which circumscribes 3 non-overlapping unit circles.
Ok, so I went and took the derivative of the expression from my last post. When I set it equal to zero, a lot simplified.
The solution for b is the positive root of b^3 + b^2 - 2b - 1 =0
-Jer
blackjack
<a href="http://c.casalemedia.com/c?s=51816&f=3&id=0" target="_blank"><img src="http://as.casalemedia.com/s?s=51816&u=http://perplexus.info&f=3&id=0&if=0" width="120" height="600" border="0"></a>
flooble's webmaster puzzle
re(2): As far as I plan to get [I'm silly!] [stop me!]
