Cardboard boxes A lidless cardboard box is to be made with a volume of 4 \(m^{3}\). Find the dimensions of the box that requires the least amount of cardboard.
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Textbook Solutions for Calculus: Early Transcendentals
Question
Optimal locations Suppose n houses are located at the distinct points \(\left(x_{1}, y_{1}\right),\left(x_{2}, y_{2}\right), \ldots,\left(x_{n}, y_{n}\right)\). A power substation must be located at a point such that the sum of the squares of the distances between the houses and the substation is minimized.
a. Find the optimal location of the substation in the case that n = 3 and the houses are located at (0,0), (2,0), and (1,1).
b. Find the optimal location of the substation in the case that n-3 and the houses are located at distinct points \(\left(x_{1}, y_{1}\right)\), \(\left(x_{2}, y_{2}\right)\), and \(\left(x_{3}, y_{3}\right)\).
c. Find the optimal location of the substation in the general case of n houses located at distinct points \(\left(x_{1}, y_{1}\right)\), \(\left(x_{1}, y_{2}\right)\),..., \(\left(x_{n}, y_{n}\right)\)
d. You might argue that the locations found in parts (a), (b) and (c) are not optimal because they result from minimizing the sum of the squares of the distances, not the sum of the distances themselves. Use the locations in part (a) and write the function that gives the sum of the distances. Note that minimizing this function is much more difficult than in part (a). Then use a graphing utility to determine whether the optimal location is the same in the two cases. (Also see Exercise 69 about Steiner's problem.)
Solution
Solution 61EStep 1Consider the power station is located at the point as shown in the figure and houses are located at let the distance between power station and a house is given by (say) The sum of squares of distances between the power station and the houses is given as follows: Now the task is to minimize the SDifferentiate the S with respect to x it gives Now differentiate S with respect to y it gives Further differentiate with respect to x gives And the differentiation of with respect to y gives Now differentiation of with respect to y gives So the discriminant is given as follows Now calculate the discriminant gives This discriminant as shown is always be positive even at the critical points. Therefore the critical points give either local maxima or local minima.Also for all , , therefore all critical points correspond to minimum.
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