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Roll away (Posted on 2018-08-15) Difficulty: 3 of 5
Graph y = x3/3 - x2/2

Imagine a small circle sitting inside the local minimum. Gravity pulls in the negative y direction so it is quite stable there.

Now increase the size of the circle. At some point it will become too large to fit in this hollow and will be forced to roll away down into the third quadrant.

At what radius does this happen?

No Solution Yet Submitted by Jer    
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Some Thoughts re: An approximate look by graphing | Comment 2 of 5 |
(In reply to An approximate look by graphing by Charlie)

Using (in the final stage of refinement)

 For r = 2.5281618 To 2.5281619 Step 0.0000000001
   x = 2.3
   diff = r - Sqr(r * r - x * x) - (x * x * x / 3 - x * x / 2)
   For x = 2.429 To 2.44 Step 0.0000001
     prev = diff
     If r * r > x * x Then
      diff = r - Sqr(r * r - x * x) - (x * x * x / 3 - x * x / 2)
      If diff * prev <= 0 Then Text1.Text = Text1.Text & r & "  " & Str(prev) & "  " & Str(diff) & "      " & Str(x) & crlf
     End If
    DoEvents
   Next x
 Next r

the radius is narrowed down to about

2.528161852

based on where the program starts finding intersections of the two curves.


  Posted by Charlie on 2018-08-15 12:40:11
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