Trinity Walton Club Activity Archive

You are a group of scientists and engineers who are studying a river. You need to get across the river to take more measurements but your boat sprung a leak and sank. At the edge of the river which you have found to have a constant flow rate you come across a child and their parent playing with a remote control boat. Looking like you know what your about the parent asks you to have a look at the remote control boat as it seems to be stuck at a constant velocity. You look at the remote control boat and see that the battery casing seems to be fused shut. There is also an old motorboat that you could use but its rudder is stuck in place and the motorboat is positioned so that it is facing directly perpendicular to the river flow. The old motorboat indicates that it has a top speed of 7m/s. On the other side of the river, there are a lot of sharp rocks and the river is very strong so you need to know where you are going to make landfall on the other side before you start the boat’s engine. There are also two docks on your side of the river a unknown distance apart. In your possession, you have a laser distance measure and a stopwatch. You use the laser distance measure to find that the river is 20 meters wide but a warning light on the device tells you, you can only make one more measurement before it runs our of battery power. If you turn on the boat when it is positioned directly perpendicular to the river flow calculate where you will end up on the other side of the river.