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Homework Statement
An eight-foot fence stands on level ground is one foot from a telephone pole. Find the shortest ladder that will reach over the fence to the pole.
Homework Equations
Pythagoras?
Derivative.
The Attempt at a Solution
The problem is I don't know how to start this equation due to the fact that it does not have an equation to work with. You see, I'm used to seeing an equation with these kind of question then all I have to do is get the Pythagoras of the picture (telephone pole to the over the fence). Then after that I eliminate 1 variable from the 2 variable equation then use the resulting equation to get its derivative. From the derivative, I can get an x or y value depending on which I had eliminated first from the previous step before getting the derivative. Then plug that in from my original equation and get a point.
PLEASE HELP?