Minimum Cost of Two Access Roads

Problem

figure

Town BB is 44 km due east of town AA. Town CC is 22 km from BB in the direction N3030^\circE. Along the riverbank, modelled by the curve PQPQ, every point is exactly 22 km farther from AA than from BB. A dock MM is to be built at some point on the curve PQPQ to transport goods to towns BB and CC. Building the road from MM to BB costs aa (in ten-thousand yuan) per km, and building the road from MM to CC costs 2a2a (in ten-thousand yuan) per km. Find the minimum total cost of building these two roads.

Answer

Solution

Difficulty7/10
TopicsExtrema, conic sections, analytic geometry

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