Christine Howe

“The Orchard Hideout” Writeup

Introduction:
In this unit problem, Madie and Clyde bought a circular plot of land. On that land, they
planted an orchard with equally spaced trees. There are 50 trees from the center of the orchard to
the boundary on the north, south, east, and west lines, and the final tree on each of these four
lines is right on the property boundary. Then they filled in the rest of the orchard with equally
spaced trees using the N, S, E, W lines as their guide. Each tree is on a lattice point on a
coordinate plane. They wanted to know how long it would take for the center of the orchard to
not be visible from the outside, which was their final goal. In the remainder of this document, I
will take you through the process and justification of solving this problem, and the solution itself.
Important Information​:
- Cross sectional area of the tree trunks increases by 1.5 in2 per year (rate of change)
- Tree trunks start with an area of 0.5 in2
- 1 unit = 10 ft
- The radius of the orchard is 50 units/50 trees

Solution: ​It will take 11.7 years, or a little more than 11 and a half years, for the last line of
sight to be blocked and the center of the orchard to become a true hideout.

Process and Justification:

Before we even began the final problem, we discovered as a class that the best line of
sight for any circular orchard is between the x axis and the row of trees above or below it (see
Image A​). The trees that will block this line are known as the “bounding trees” (highlighted in
blue in the image below), and they are essential to solving the problem. We can draw a right
triangle using the best last line of sight as the hypotenuse, the x axis as one leg, and length
connecting the point the last line of sight passes through and the x axis as the other leg. After
discussing the problem in class and with some of my peers and doing assignments similar to the
final problem, I came to the conclusion that the way to solve the final unit problem was using
this right triangle and a triangle that is ​similar ​to it.
Image A:
 Christine Howe

Now that we have identified the triangle needed to solve the problem, we need to identify
its measurements. (For the following claims, see ​Image B ​below) One leg, leg a, will be 50 units
long, because it is the radius of the orchard. The other leg, leg b, will be 1 unit long because the
line of sight only passes through one unit.
Image B:

So, we need to find length c, the hypotenuse. To do this I used the pythagorean theorem (see
Image C​). The calculations show c = √2501 .
Image C:
*NOTE that in the image it says c = 2501, but the correct answer is c = √2501 .

Now, we must use our knowledge of similar triangles and how they relate to one another
to find the radius of the bounding trees, which will later allow us to find out how long it will take
for the center of the orchard to become a hideout. In ​Image D, o​ bserve the smaller right triangle
that is similar to the larger triangle above. We know that the hypotenuse is 1 unit because it is the
distance from the origin/center of the orchard to the first tree/bounding tree. The leg, ​r, ​is the
radius of the bounding tree and is the measurement we are trying to find. By creating the
1
proportion you see below, √2501 = 1x , we find that the measurement of ​r ​is 0.02 units.
 Christine Howe

Image D:

Now, we must convert the radius of the bounding trees (0.02 units) into inches so that all the
measurements are the same. Since 1 unit = 10 feet, we can do 0.02 * 10 = 0.2 ft, then
0.2 ft * 12 = 2.4 inches since there are 12 inches in a foot. So the final radius of the bounding
trees is 2.4 inches.
The next step is to find the ending cross sectional area of the bounding trees so we can
compare that to the growth rate to find our solution. The equation to find the area of a circle is
A = πr 2 , so when we plug in our values we find that the ending area is 18.1 in2 (see ​Image E)​ .
Image E:

To find the final solution, we must find the difference between the starting and ending
areas of the bounding trees (18.1 in2 - 0.5 in2 =17.6 in2 ), and finally, the relationship between
this value and the rate at which the trees grow per year (1.5 in2 ). To do this, we simply divide
17.6 by 1.5 - 17.6 ÷ 1.5 = 11.7 . So, ​it will take about 11.7 years, or a little more than 11 and
a half years, for the orchard to become a true orchard hideout.