great, I fixed the quoted pm in that post.


sorry for the confusion... oops.

Any help is better than none. I was one of the oldests one in the test session. Two guys older and nine kids fresh out of college and engineering school. That made for a couple of interesting conversations. A couple of them had never done simple word problems before without a calculator.:eek:

There were several circle, circumferance, and radius calc that brought their minds to a screaching halt!! Those ones made me feel a whole lot better. Right up until they said oh you just had to due opposie over ajacent blah blah blah.

Actually, I'm coming back to your position. :D

I mean, as the crow flies and all, but we don't fly like crows. I dunno, you could read it either way.

I've never used calculus and have forgotten how to do it, but I can sorta explain what it is.

However, I use algebra all the time, and trigonometry semi often. It's a very useful tool in building.

Wait, those guys made it through engineering school and had trouble with (I'm guessing) relatively simple problems involving circles? Whoa . . .

IT gave an example a pully turning at 1200 rpm with a circumfrance of x. It is driving a pully with a 3 in radius. How fast is the second pully going.
That type of problems.

I took Trigonometry in high school, and passed it, but it really didn't take. I took a one day crash course in Army Missile School and I understood all that I ever needed to know. I then took a semester of Trigonometry in college and blew right through it.

The secret to Trig is "Oscar Has A Heap Of Apples"

O
- = Sin
H

A
- = Cosine
H

O
- = Tangent
A


With these three formulas along with trig tables or a Scientific Calculator, coupled with some elementary algebra and you can solve any trig problem that anyone can ever throw at you.


When I started takinig Trig in college after a week or two I was sitting outside the classroom waiting for the teacher to show up. A guy I didn't know casually commented in a scared tone of voice something like "I will NEVER pass this course!" I looked at him and said "All you have to know is Oscar has a heap of Apples.

He looked at me like I must have rocks in my head. I wrote the above formulas on a piece of paper and pointed at each letter in turn while I sounded out Oscar - Has - A - Heap - Of - Apples.

A few weeks later, he walked up to me before class and said "You were exactly right, all you have to know is "Oscar Has A Heap Of Apples."

Don't make things too complicated. Get a scientific calculator, write down the above formulas on a piece of paper. Draw a right triangle and label the Adjacent, Opposite and Hypotenuse and teach yourself trigonometry.

The Army taught me in one day, what a college thinks it takes a semester to learn.

Hope this helps.

That makes it easier. The only issue is no caculators.

I like the way the military taught a couple of things- Like ELI the ICE man.
In a Conductive circuit (L) voltage (E) leads current(I)
Ina capacitive circuit (C) current(I) leads voltage(E)

They were able to use a calculator throughout their education hence the panic.

These types of tests annoy me. If I need to know such information I'll look up the formulas and do the work. I haven't done such a problem since my second semester of college!

ELI the ICE man and "Our Commander Sucks Lemons." Open capacitive and short inductive. The professors can laugh, but it helps it to stick with you.

I used to run into this question all the time.

My solution was to get on the shortwave and query the ships' Master for a position!

Sorry to come to this discussion so late, but I am confused.

Do we agree that the distance from the observer to the boat is the hypotenuse?

And that the calculation goes as follows:

distance = 300/sin(15.9) = 1095' ?

Is that correct?

Correct.

It depends on whether we're talking about distance thru the air, or distance on the water with the boat ending up below the observer.

Along the same lines, my high school math teacher gave us SOH CAH TOA, which still sticks with me today. Say them out loud as words: so kah toe-ah.

Sine = Opposite side divided by the Hypotenuse.
Cosine = Adjacent side divided by the Hypotenuse.
Tangent = Opposite side divided by the Adjacent side

not entirely.

you need to estimate without a calculator, using the trig tables.

distance is about 1088 @ 16*