Repeat Exercise 47, but assume a pigeon needs 10/9 as much energy to fly over water as
Question:
Repeat Exercise 47, but assume a pigeon needs 10/9 as much energy to fly over water as over land.
Exercise 47
Homing pigeons avoid flying over large bodies of water, preferring to fly around them instead. (One possible explanation is the fact that extra energy is required to fly over water because air pressure drops over water in the daytime.) Assume that a pigeon released from a boat 1 mile from the shore of a lake (point B in the figure) flies first to point P on the shore and then along the straight edge of the lake to reach its home at L. If L is 2 miles from point A, the point on the shore closest to the boat, and if a pigeon needs 5/4 as much energy per mile to fly over water as over land, find the location of point P, which minimizes energy used.
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