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Number2Pencil
- 208
- 1
Homework Statement
This is somewhat of a design problem instead of a right/wrong answer. A pinger is placed in the ocean which produces an audible sound at random intervals from an unknown location. For simplicity say the sound travels at 1m per second. 3 hydrophones are placed on a submarine in a T shape, with a max distance of 10 m for the top of the T and 20m for the long part of the T. The only information from the hydrophones about the ping includes which hydrophone the ping hits first, and the times it takes for the ping to travel from the first hydrophone to the other two. The crewmen must use this information to calculate the angle of the pinger relative to the sub.
Homework Equations
parabola = Ax^2 + Bx + C
The Attempt at a Solution
I put hydrophone A and B on the top of the T. I tried to use the fact that at 0deg the time between hydrophone A and B would = 0, at 90deg the time between A and B would be 10s, and after acurately drawing a scaled down version on a piece of paper and properly having the pinger placed at 45 deg, when the time between A and B was 2.67s the angle was 45 deg.
I tried to create a parabola equation to make an theta(t) equation...but it didn't turn out so well.
any other ideas??