Dear Minister
At each school, students
will use terminals to access information via a dedicated high bandwidth line.
The student and staff are excited by the idea, but there have been delays.
The computing facility must be strategically located to minimise the cost
of the dedicated lines, but the engineers are not quite sure how to do this.
The A Grade students
at Alpha High have written to the Minister for Education suggesting the following.
Take a thick
piece of cardboard; mark to scale the positions of the schools A, B
and D; drill a smooth hole at each of these points; knot three
pieces of string together at one end; pass one piece through each hole;
attach equal weights to each string; jiggle the board until equilibrium
is reached. The knot will be over the point F that minimises the
sum of the distances AF, BF, and DF. Build the computing
facility at the point F (called a Fermat
point).
By experimenting
the Minister can see that the students are right, but he asks Why
is this so?
The students have written him a reply.
