What is the dune buggy problem, and how do I answer it?
Reproduced from memory and used without permission of NCSSM: “A driver in the Baja Desert Dune Buggy Rally is found dehydrated at a checkpoint. The check point is 25 miles due south from a point on the Main Road, and this point is 70 miles due west from a hospital in town along the straight Main Road. The driver must be taken to the hospital as fast as possible. A dune buggy can average 40 miles an hour across the sand and an ambulance can average 60 on the Main Road. How far from the previously mentioned point on the Main Road should the dune buggy and ambulance meet in order to get the driver to the hospital in the shortest amount of time?” Don’t you just love problems that involve d=rt, the Pythagorean Theorem, and minimization, all in one? Okay, here goes. You’re solving this for minimum TIME, not minimum distance. So, the answer is not “Drive straight to the hospital”. Nor is the answer “Drive straight to the road”. It’s somewhere in between. Also, you don’t want the point where t
